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How Hudbay’s Santa Rita mining will impact Southern Arizona’s waterways

Tohono O’odham Nation’s San Xavier District Chairman Austin Nunez hikes through BLM land after surveying Hudbay’s mining operation in the foothills of the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson, Ariz. on Friday, March 11, 2023 Credit: Michael McKisson

By John Washington | June 26, 2023

Austin Nunez, Chairman of the San Xavier district of the Tohono O’odham Nation, walks through the desert grass, nimbly weaving between ocotillo and barrel cactus, climbing up a pathless foothill of the Santa Rita Mountains just south of Tucson. 

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Wearing black Lowa hiking shoes, blue jeans, a light long-sleeve button down shirt, with a black bag over one shoulder and a Tohono O’odham baseball hat on his head, he takes a moment, leans down, and admires a rainbow hedgehog cactus. 

Continuing to climb, after gaining enough elevation to gather in the full view, he turns around to look at the site of the proposed Copper World Complex mine, a vast area of once-pristine desert grassland rising into an imposing mountain range. Though actual digging for copper and other minerals may still be years or decades away — if it happens at all — the Canadian mining company Hudbay, has, over the past year, already clearcut huge tracts of scrub and cactus and carved a network of roads and berms out of this patch of desert. 

Nunez takes in the scene before him, sighs heavily, and, then, under his breath, says “Whoa.” 

He takes another deep breath: “I’ll be nice about it. They’re raping mother earth.”

The Santa Rita mountains, or Ce:wi duag in the Tohono O’odham language, are a favorite spot for Southern Arizonans to go hiking, camping, or birding. The Ciénega Creekone of Arizona’s most intact riparian areas, and from which Tucson takes a significant amount of its annual water, flows between the Santa Ritas and Whetstone Mountains.

Nunez says of the proposed mine, “It’s very short-sighted. They’re going for temporary economic gain and aren’t concerned about the future, how the mine will affect the wildlife and the waterflow.”

In a June 5 emailed comment from Hudbay, a spokesperson wrote to Arizona Luminaria that the company’s plan is to “not only responsibly extract minerals, but also produce finished copper on-site.”

Addressing concerns about wildlife and water contamination, Hudbay noted that the Army Corps of Engineers, in March 2021, concluded “that there are no jurisdictional waters in the area,” meaning that the washes do not meet the threshold of prompting federal protection.

An aerial image of the work being done by Hudbay in the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson on March 10, 2023. Credit: Michael McKisson

A new hydrology report published last November, commissioned by EarthJustice, the nonprofit law firm that represents the Tohono O’odham, Pascua Yaqui and Hopi tribes that are challenging Hudbay in court, shows how the giant mining operation would have enormous detrimental impact on local waterways, including the Santa Cruz River which flows north through the heart of Tucson.  

The land these rivers and washes flow through shows signs of having been inhabited for as long as 10,000 years, and has long been a dwelling and gathering place, as well as a sacred site, for the Hohokam and Tohono O’odham people. Today, it is one of the last remaining habitats in the country for the jaguar, as well as multiple other endangered species. The famous Arizona Trail, on which hikers can walk from Mexico to Utah, passes directly through land that would become a half-mile deep scar into the earth.

“‘Ridgeline modification,’ they call it,” says Russ McSpadden, southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, who is hiking with Nunez. “But it’s mountaintop removal. They’re completely changing the view.”

Even as the legal saga over whether or not Hudbay can start digging plays out in courts and among government regulators, Hudbay has been able to push forward on preliminary work. Though what they’ve done so far is only a negligible fraction of what multiple open pit mines will do to the landscape, critics note that the company has already affected the local waterways and scarred land that is both beloved and sacred.

Hudbay officials know they have a long path ahead of them before they may be able to actually extract copper. Their current goals, according to a 2023 management discussion posted on their website, include “the completion of pre-feasibility studies, state permitting activities, evaluating a bulk sampling program and a potential joint venture partnership.” 

A handwritten sign warns drivers of road work by Hudbay in the foothills of the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson on Friday, March 10, 2023. Credit: Michael McKisson

Mark Murphy, the geologist who wrote the hydrology report, is one of the leading experts in the Clean Water Act, which regulates how mining and other projects must address local impact on hydrology systems. Murphy estimated that the Santa Cruz River supports eighty-four species of mammals, fourteen fish species, and forty-one species of reptiles and amphibians, and provides habitat for millions of migrating and resident birds and waterfowl each year. In other words, blocking, draining, or polluting the tributaries that feed the Santa Cruz would affect an entire ecosystem.

In the report, Murphy concludes that “the physical, chemical, and biological integrity” of the Santa Cruz River depends on the upstream “ephemeral tributaries.” The very streams the digging of the mine would irrecoverably threaten. 

McSpadden has seen first hand what Murphy has concluded in his report. “The whole thing drains right into the Santa Cruz,” McSpadden says. “I’ve come out here during the monsoons and you can see the flow. They’re already blocking these streams and they don’t have the permits to do that.”

Nunez and McSpadden pass binoculars back and forth as they survey the extent of the damage. 

“I pray every day that it will be stopped in some way or another,” Nunez says. 

A winding timeline

It’s not easy to track all the flip flops in the Copper World Complex mining saga. Even keeping track of what the project is called — for years it was known as the Rosemont Mine — and where exactly Hudbay is proposing to dig can be hard to follow. Some background helps put into perspective the whiplashing ping-pong of permits granted, permits denied, and permits revoked, and how Hudbay has still managed to conduct significant preliminary work despite the ongoing legal tug-of-war.

Though the northern reaches of the Santa Ritas have been mined at small scale — think pick and shovel, maybe a team of donkeys — for over 100 years, hopes for massive, industrial-scale mining began in the 1970s when Anaconda Copper started seeking to buy up land in the area. The corporation then merged with another, changed its name to Asarco, and then another corporation swooped in, and finally Hudbay took over speculative permitting and exploratory drilling in 2014. 

A Hudbay employee sits at the entrance to the mining operation in the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson, Ariz. on Friday, March 11, 2023. Credit: Michael McKisson

Hudbay has been wrangling with Pima County, Tucson, Sahuarita, and a host of state and federal agencies to counter the concerns of environmentalists and obtain the stack of permits needed before it can start digging. But resistance to the large-scale mine has been fierce. While objections range widely, the most feared impact concerns how the proposed mine would pollute and disrupt local waterways. 

Those concerns were fought over and litigated all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, as justices sought to tease out which bodies of water should be considered “waters of the United States,” thus putting them under the regulatory protection of the Environmental Protection Agency.  

The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case last summer, and just issued a ruling on May 26 in a decision the White House said in a statement “will take our country backwards” in terms of protecting threatened waterways. 

While the ruling narrows the definition of what is considered a waterway, and is a win for mining companies, not all the red tape is cleared for Hudbay. Federal bills on both sides of the issue are currently wending their way through the legislature.

This February, Arizona’s independent senator, Kyrsten Sinema, proposed designating copper a mineral vital for national security. She later reiterated her support for mining in the region. 

Arizona Luminaria reached out to Sinema’s office on June 8 with a list of questions about her stance on the proposed mine in the Santa Ritas. As of June 26, her office has not responded.

In April, U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho) introduced the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, co-sponsored by Sinema, which would allow mining companies to use federal land to dump their tailings. According to a Center for Biological Diversity press release, the move “could result in millions of acres of public lands becoming mining wastelands, putting that use above watershed protection, cultural resources and recreation.”

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who opposes the Copper World Project, recently introduced the Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act, to protect the Santa Ritas, as well as other vulnerable sites, from mining. 

“For more than a century and a half, the mining industry has operated under an outdated, free-for-all claims system that gives them carte blanche to pollute and destroy, while American taxpayers get stuck with the cleanup bill,” Grijalva wrote in a press release.

Hudbay work on the mining operation in the foothills of the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson on Friday, March 11, 2023. Credit: Michael McKisson

It’s not only the federal agencies that need to approve. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality has pulled rank on Pima County to be able to issue Copper World’s air quality permit, calling the county’s previous denial of a permit “arbitrary and capricious.” 

The county has long been in opposition to the proposed mine. The city of Tucson, too, has long opposed any company digging in the Santa Ritas. The existing air quality permit for the Rosemont mine expires this April 23, so it will be up to the department of environmental quality to issue an extension — or not.

On March 10, when Chairman Nunez and McSpadden climbed hills in the area to survey the damage, dirt-hauling trucks were bumping along the roads, and a Hudbay sign read “Road Work. Proceed with Caution.”

Water and mining

In addition to building up infrastructure in preparation for digging, Hudbay’s current work includes preparation for a utility corridor to facilitate a water pipeline and high-voltage electric transmission lines along Santa Rita Road, on the east side of the range, north of the town of Sonoita. 

That preparatory work highlights how deeply impacting the mine could be on the local environment: not only will it block and contaminate surrounding washes, critics say it will suck up huge amounts of water just to run the mine.

Hudbay documents show they will initially use up to 6,000 acre-feet of water per year from the local watershed. The company is authorized to pump 6,000 acre-feet per year at their Sahuarita wellfield for 20 years. Hudbay’s Preliminary Economic Assessment issued in June of 2022 indicates that the first phase of operations will require 9,400 acre-feet per year, rising to 14,000 acre-feet per year in Phase 2.

A single acre-foot of water is 325,851 gallons, or the amount of water needed to cover an acre of land a foot deep — a lot of water for the desert. The company also says that its total water usage is unclear, as it will be “determined by the size and technology of the final project as permitted,” and states that its goal is to become a “net neutral water user by recharging 100% of the water” used during production as a “voluntary measure.”

Recharging groundwater is pumping it back into the aquifer. According to the United States Geological Survey, that can be done by redirecting water via canals or “injection wells” which pump water into underground reservoirs.  

Furthermore, Hudbay contends that whatever washes or arroyos it may alter are not proper waterways, which is one of the marquee fights over the proposed mine.

Mark Murphy, the writer of the hydrology report, spoke to Arizona Luminaria before the recent Supreme Court ruling about whether or not the washes were proper waterways. While he said that it depends on who you ask and under what administration you ask it, in the end, “there is a connection between ephemeral streams and downstream waters,” Murphy says.

“If water that supports ecological integrity is denied, or made less healthy, there will be an impact on downstream, and it won’t be good,” Murphy says.

HudBay has addressed some of these hydrological concerns on its website, explaining, “To be a good neighbor – and an innovative project – Rosemont has committed to replacing all of the water used in its operations.”

In a June 5 emailed comment from Hudbay, a spokesperson wrote to Arizona Luminaria that the company has “studied the ability of the dry washes on the west side to transport contaminants downstream by analyzing stormwater, sediment, and plant samples. The analysis is clear that contaminants from the historic mining activities in Helvetia do not reach the Santa Cruz River, and certainly do not reach the Colorado River, which is the nearest downstream water that is actually navigable.”

Russ McSpadden, left, the Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity points out a feature of Hudbay’s mining operation to Tohono O’odham Nation’s San Xavier District Chairman Austin Nunez on Friday, March 11, 2023. Credit: Michael McKisson

“Inherently incredibly destructive” 

Dr. Julia Neilson is the director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Environmentally Sustainable Mining. “Hardrock mining of copper is inherently incredibly destructive,” Neilson said. 

The fact is, unfortunately, copper doesn’t always exist in convenient places to mine it,” she says. 

Nunez and others, meanwhile, suggest a lifestyle change may be necessary.  

“It’s heartrending to see this land destroyed because of the need to have tools and devices that we didn’t need before,” Nunez said. “We need to think twice about taking care of mother earth, if we don’t take care of her, we don’t take care of ourselves.”

To make matters more complicated, Neilson added that in the desert it takes an especially long time for ecosystems to recover once giant holes are dug into them. 

The pit Hudbay proposes to dig, Neilson said, will be “a permanent problem.” 

In response, the Hudbay spokesperson said, “Before, during, and after mining is complete Hudbay is taking into consideration the best way to operate in a sustainable manner and that protects the environment.” They added, noting their reclamation efforts, “Modern mining begins with the end in mind.”

An aerial panorama of the Hudbay mining operation in the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson on Friday, March 11, 2023. Credit: Michael McKisson

Local resistance

Steve Brown, in his mid-70s, grew up on Santa Rita ranch, in the northern foothills of the mountain range. Steve, as well as his grandfather and grandchildren, have all learned the ins and outs of the foothills and ranges: where to spot deer and coatamundi, where to find seeps and springs. 

“How does it enhance the safety and public health to allow a foreign company to dump toxic waste into the environment?” Brown asks. Hudbay has been pushing the state land trust to sell them land to use to deposit mining waste on, according to memos on April 17 and June 6 to the Pima County Board of Supervisors.

The company is also buying and offering to buy residential property in a Vail neighborhood that butts up against that state land trust-owned property, according to documents submitted to the Pima County Board of Supervisors.   

The spokesperson for Hudbay said that “Phase I of Copper World will require Hudbay to obtain state and local permits to begin operations. The state’s permitting process includes the opportunity for members of the public to review the data and information, ask questions, and provide comments to regulators prior to the issuance of the permits.” They added that there will be public hearings for people to air their concerns.

That promise doesn’t pacify Brown.

“We will fight this for as long as it takes,” Brown says. “It really upsets me when someone from Hudbay comes and says ‘There’s nothing here,’ which is basically what they’re saying. I was raised in those mountains. They have been considered sacred for thousands of years. They’re not called Santa Ritas by accident.”

Tohono O’odham Nation’s San Xavier District Chairman Austin Nunez surveys Hudbay’s mining operation in the foothills of the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson on Friday, March 11, 2023 Credit: Michael McKisson

“Heartrending to see the demolition”

Nunez and McSpadden turn from the cut-up western foothills to admire Huerfano Butte, a lone peak, or inselberg, that is the site of pictographs and potsherds, long a sacred site for pilgrimage and ceremony for the Tohono O’odham. Nunez explains that O’odham people from the Tucson area would visit the site before they continued into the mountains to collect material for baskets, medicines, and acorns. 

“This is where we come to pray and recreate,” he says, looking out again at the road-scarred foothills in front of him. 

Nunez has been chairman of the San Xavier district for 36 years. “I never imagined I would be serving my community this long. I started because I wanted to help my children, so they could have the same or better than I had.”

His youngest grandchild, seven years old, is named Alaya. “I’m concerned about the availability of water for her, about the way the climate has changed. I’m concerned for her children and grandchildren.”

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

Federal, state officials promise more tribal inclusion in Colorado River negotiations

Lake Nighthorse, near Durango, Colorado on May 26, 2023. Both of Colorado’s tribes, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Utes have water in Lake Nighthorse they haven’t been able to access. Credit: Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk, with aerial support by LightHawk.

By Heather Sackett | July 1, 2023

Federal and state officials have promised more tribal inclusion on the next round of negotiating the operating guidelines for the Colorado River, but what exactly that will look like is still unclear.

On June 16, the Bureau of Reclamation released a notice of intent (NOI), which formally advanced the process for the development of new operating guidelines for the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. In the document, Reclamation says that during the upcoming guidelines negotiations, it intends to develop an approach that facilitates and enhances tribal engagement and inclusivity. Officials say they will also prioritize regular, meaningful and robust consultation with tribal nations.

“Existing forums and groups will be continued and leveraged, such as the monthly Reclamation-hosted Tribal Information Exchanges,” the NOI reads. “Reclamation is also exploring options for increasing tribal involvement through the potential development of new groups and forums.”

Tribes have historically been largely excluded from policy talks and some have said they only learn about decisions made by the seven states and federal government after the fact.

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton previewed the NOI the week before it was released, speaking at a law conference on natural resources at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“We are looking to stand up a forum in which we are engaging with tribal nations,” she said. “There will be a specific framework how we engage with the tribes.”

A Reclamation spokesperson said they don’t have any details to add at this time about what the framework will look like beyond Touton’s comments.

The Colorado River basin’s 30 tribes have rights to use about 25% of the water, a percentage that is slowly increasing as river flows decline overall due to drought and climate change. And most of their rights are senior to nearly all other water users in the basin.

Although they were not included in the Colorado River Compact that divided the river, giving half of the flows to the upper basin and half to the lower basin, the 1908 Winters Doctrine reserved water rights for tribes. The doctrine established tribes’ water rights on the same date the federal government established their reservation, but not the amount of water to which they were entitled.

Tribes have had to quantify and settle their water rights within their states and tribal water comes out of each state’s allocation from the Colorado River. Unlike other water users, tribes don’t have to put the water to beneficial use to hang onto the rights for future development. That means there are unquantified water rights out there on paper that have never been used, although some tribes say they still fully intend to develop their water.

But in an already over-allocated system, any new water project that takes more from the Colorado River could be problematic. Tribes’ unused water has been propping up the system for years, and when finally put to beneficial use, it could exacerbate shortages for other water users.

“Water that is undeveloped tribal water rights is sitting in Powell and being used in some way, shape or form at some point,” said Becky Mitchell, commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission. “Somebody else is benefiting from it. Who benefits from continuing the way that we have, that’s the question we need to ask ourselves.”

Lake Nighthorse, near Durango, Colorado on May 26, 2023. Bureau of Reclamation officials have promised more tribal inclusion in the negotiation of the post-2026 reservoir operating guidelines. Credit: Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk, with aerial support by LightHawk.

Structural inclusion

The seven basin states — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, California, Arizona and Nevada — negotiated the current interim guidelines for reservoir operations in 2007, and the guidelines are set to expire at the end of 2026. Developed in response to drought conditions in the first years of the century, the 2007 guidelines set shortage tiers based on reservoir levels and spelled out which states in the lower basin would take shortages and by how much their water deliveries would be cut in dry years.

Every component of the 2007 guidelines — and then some — is up for renegotiation as water managers figure out river management post-2026, said Anne Castle, a federal appointee and chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission. Castle is also on the leadership team for the Colorado River Basin Water & Tribes Initiative.

“There’s also discussion about broadening the scope of what will be considered in this set of guidelines,” she said. “That could include environmental benefit for the river. It could include development of undeveloped tribal rights. It could include a number of things that have not been previously part of the river operations plumbing discussion.”

One thing on which many agree is the need for tribes’ structural inclusion, meaning their seat at the table will be formally guaranteed and won’t be dependent on the promises of individual state or federal officials who could be replaced at the whims of a new administration. Tribal inclusion was a focus of the CU conference and included a panel discussion with representatives of 14 of the 30 tribes from across the basin.

“We really want tribes to be part of the negotiations and the discussions and the development of the post-2026 operational guidelines and we want this to be institutionalized as well,” Lorelei Cloud, vice chair of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in southwestern Colorado, said as a panelist at the CU conference.

“Having a formal process is what’s needed,” said Cloud, a director on the Colorado Water Conservation Board, representing the San Miguel/Dolores/Animas and San Juan river basins. “It didn’t happen in 1922 or before, so we know it really needs to be in writing as we go forward.”

A conference panel at the University of Colorado Boulder featured representatives from 14 tribes from across the Colorado River Basin. Tribes say their structural inclusion is key. Alex Hager/KUNC

How to do it

Each tribe is a sovereign government with their own unique water issues, which creates challenges when trying to include everyone.

“If you know one tribe, you know one tribe,” said Daryl Vigil, co-director of the Water & Tribes Initiative, water administrator for the Jicarilla Apache Nation and panel moderator at the CU conference. “To think there’s an Indian solution really dishonors that individuality and uniqueness of those tribes.”

In 2020, the Water & Tribes Initiative released a report called “Toward a Sense of the Basin: Designing a Collaborative Process to Develop the Next Set of Guidelines for the Colorado River System.” In it, the report’s writers set out potential options for tribal participation, including a Sovereign Review Team (SRT) and a Tribal Advisory Council (TAC). An SRT would consist of federal, state and tribal representatives; would treat tribes as equal players with the states and federal government; and would be an advisory group and the main forum to receive input from stakeholders and the public. A TAC would include representatives from each of the 30 tribes in the basin.

“One of the real issues is how do you choose tribal representatives that would represent more than their own tribe. That’s very problematic,” Castle said. “But at the same time, it’s recognized that having representatives of seven states and 30 tribes sitting in a room is a logistical problem and difficult to have meaningful discussions with that many people. There are logistical issues that need to be talked about further and worked out.”

Representatives from the upper basin states (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico) and upper basin tribes have been meeting over the past year, usually on tribal territory, partly in an effort to strengthen relationships between water managers. Vigil said that representatives from the group of 14 tribes, known as the basin tribal coalition, have also been meeting over the past year with the seven basin states to talk about collaboration. He said his hope is that tribes will also have to be signatories, along with the seven basin states and the federal government, on governing policy documents — such as the post-2026 guidelines — regarding river operations.

“Tribes understand that this is probably one of the most important components in terms of the forward movement of water policy in the basin: to have structural inclusion in the decision-making process,” he said.

Mitchell said tribal inclusion and engagement is a top priority for her going into the negotiations. Her commitment to the tribes includes communication, consultation and coordination on decision-making, she said.

“I view their involvement as critical and imperative to the success of the post-2026 reservoir operations negotiations,” Mitchell said. “It’s no secret when the compact was signed in 1922, no tribes were involved, consulted or even informed. I cannot alone correct that, but we can do better and we should do better, and we have a responsibility to do better.”

Colorado has two tribal nations, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Utes. They both settled their water rights with the state in 1986. But that doesn’t mean they can put their water to beneficial use. The Southern Ute Indian Tribe has about 38,000 acre-feet of stored water for municipal and industrial use in Lake Nighthorse, part of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Animas-La Plata project. But because of a lack of infrastructure and high operation and maintenance costs, they haven’t been able to access it.

“In a perfect world, I want to see the federal government fulfill its obligations to the tribal nations,” Mitchell said. “That includes its responsibility to consult with the tribes on a sovereign to sovereign basis and to support the tribes in accessing and utilizing their water resources.”

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

New study shows Durango’s water supplies declining dramatically as climate change, drought hit home

Aerial view of the Animas River and Durango, Colorado on May 26, 2023. Photo by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk. Aerial support provided by LightHawk.

By Jerd Smith | May 31, 2023 

Climate change has come home to Durango, with a new study indicating that the once water-rich mining and railroad mecca is much drier than it once was, so dry in fact that the city can no longer depend solely on direct flow from the Florida and Animas rivers for a reliable supply of water.

Like other small towns in Colorado, Durango has very little water storage, enough to last for less than 10 days. It has always relied on its ability to pull water directly from the Florida River, using the Animas River as backup. But that is no longer possible, prompting the city to fast-track a major regional pipeline project to tap storage in Lake Nighthorse and to double down on conservation.

Larger cities often have water storage reservoirs that can carry them for months if not years during dry periods. But that’s not necessarily the case in smaller rural and mountain towns.

new study of stream gage data conducted for Durango by the Silverton-based Mountain Studies Institute (MSI) shows that average annual precipitation in one of the town’s major watersheds has declined as much as 19.7% annually since the late 1980s and runoff, the water that eventually makes it to the stream, has dropped even more, as much as 35.7% in the Florida (pronounced Floreeeda) River watershed. The same trend, though to a much lesser extent, is also showing up in the Animas River watershed.

“It’s eye opening,” said Jarrod Biggs, Durango’s assistant finance director who has overseen much of the city’s recent water planning efforts. “It’s confirmation of what our anecdotal evidence has told us. It doesn’t go down to nothing, but it is a significant difference from where we were a decade or two ago.”

Jake Kurzweil, a hydrologist and associate director of water programs at MSI who conducted the study, said the declines help illustrate on a local level how watersheds have begun to dry out as the climate warms. The data also measures how much water the natural environment uses, essentially intercepting runoff before it can reach streams, which cities, farmers and industry tap for their water supply needs.

In the Florida River analysis, a measure known as the runoff ratio is markedly declining. The ratio is obtained by taking annual runoff and dividing it by precipitation.

“The runoff ratio is showing us how efficient the watershed is at generating water. Not only are we getting less precipitation, the efficiency of the watershed is also declining. My hypothesis is that we are well below the environmental demand for water,” Kurzweil said.

Similar trends are showing up in the Animas watershed, but right now they are not as alarming as those in the Florida. Kurzweil said because the Animas watershed is bigger and its terrain is more diverse, it is better protected from the harsh temperatures and strong sunlight that have driven the drying trends on the Florida River.

Peter Goble, a climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center housed at Colorado State University, cautioned that the region’s 1,200-plus-year megadrought likely exaggerates the level of declines seen in the MSI data. He also said that long-term climate warming forecasts don’t show dramatic drying trends in the next 30 to 40 years.

“[Kurzweil] is comparing a time when we scarcely had any droughts to a period that has been quite dry. Precipitation can vary widely and our climate models don’t show this clear drying signal…if anything climate models show that precipitation may increase just a little bit,” Goble said.

“Yes it’s getting warmer, yes we do need to be concerned about that, yes it does put pressure on our environmental systems. However I don’t like comparing [1985-1999 to 2010-2021] specifically because you are capturing the high side and the low side,” Goble said, referring to the time periods MSI used in its analysis.

Kurzweil acknowledges that the megadrought has exacerbated the drying seen in Durango’s river systems, but he said he thinks the trend will likely continue, in part because though Northern Colorado could see more precipitation as its climate warms, Southwestern Colorado could be drier because it is so much farther south.

The Florida and Animas rivers are part of the San Juan/Miguel/Dolores river basin. Regional officials are tracking the local trends closely.

Ken Curtis is general manager of the Dolores Water Conservancy District in Cortez, a 50-minute drive west of Durango. Curtis is working with a slate of forest, climate and water specialists to find ways to create healthier forests that are less prone to wildfires and better able to sustain water production as the climate continues to warm up.

“Clearly the southwest is a drier area than the northern parts of Colorado,” Curtis said. “Climatologically we’re closer to a desert and we are at lower latitudes.”

Durango’s Biggs said the city had been planning to build a pipeline from Lake Nighthorse, a federal reservoir built in the early 2000s, at some point in the future to provide access to more storage. But such a project, likely to cost tens of millions of dollars, had been seen as a long-term goal, not an immediate need.

The new analysis has prompted Durango to fast-track the project and to keep its eye on ongoing and new conservation efforts.

“Presenting the data to our decision makers compelled them to move ahead with something we had been thinking about for quite some time,” Biggs said.

“Now, we want to activate this water in the near term. We don’t want to be in a situation where in five years we need it and we still haven’t built the pipeline,” Biggs said.

Durango is working with regional partners including the Southern Ute Tribe, in Ignacio, and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, in Towaoc, as well as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and others to see if the pipeline can be built in the next five years and provide benefits to everyone in the region.

“We all know the future is uncertain, but Kurzweil painted a realistic picture that shows that everybody’s sentiments are true. We are going to have to do with less water…so in the same breath when we talk about a pipeline we also have to talk about conservation,” Biggs said.

And it’s not just conservation and storage. Local planners are also thinking about worst-case scenarios and emergency backups.

“It’s really tricky,” Kurzweil said. “When you’re trying to do municipal planning you need to look at not just the day-to-day but at the catastrophic. There is a real-life scenario on the Florida when supply is critically low, and a pipeline breaks and there is wildfire and an unplanned spill.”

“There is a universe where that exists. I hope it’s not ours,” he said.

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

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

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

An Arizona water story where ranchers, environmentalists and developers are collaborating

Diana Freshwater and Michael McDonald walk through Sopori Creek on April 14, 2023. The mesquite bosque surrounding the wash has not yet leafed out. Photo by Johanna Willett

By Johanna Willett, AZ Luminaria
June 13, 2023

Water Desk Grantee Publication

This story was supported by the Water Desk’s grants program.

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The sandy bed of Sopori Creek stretches east across Southern Arizona toward Amado, ambling through windblown ranchland until it eventually crosses Interstate 19 and empties into the Santa Cruz River on the other side.

On a mostly-cool morning in April, the mesquite bosque flanking the creek has not yet leafed out. These trees will wake soon, following cottonwood giants downstream whose leafy boughs already shade the wash. 

Standing on a ridge overlooking the dry creek and nearby farmland, Diana Freshwater, the board president for the Arizona Land and Water Trust, explains that almost 20 years ago this land was destined for development. Plans envisioned homes, a golf course and a resort until Santa Cruz voters halted that idea in 2008. 

Today, the nonprofit trust is in the middle of a five-phase campaign to purchase and protect the 1,310 acres that make up Sopori Creek and Farm.

Located in Santa Cruz County about 15 minutes south of Green Valley, the farm and creek are part of the expansive Sopori Ranch, much of which has already been protected in Pima County.

A map from Arizona Land and Water Trust showcases the shallow groundwater system around Sopori Creek and the scale of the Sopori Wash watershed. Sopori Farm, the property the trust is in the process of purchasing, is visible in yellow. Photo courtesy Arizona Land and Water Trust

In fact, most of the Sopori Creek watershed is in Pima County, but the trust’s purchase of this additional acreage protects a portion of the creek that traipses through a corner of Santa Cruz County, further preserving its drainage into the Santa Cruz River and protecting the larger watershed and habitat from the impact of potential development. Although Sopori Creek is usually dry, it’s a significant tributary of the Santa Cruz River and part of a shallow groundwater system that seeps into the aquifer. 

By purchasing this land from the company First United Realty, the trust is attempting  to piece together protection for the local watershed, along with preserving thousands of acres of working landscape, including about 300 acres of irrigated farmland with grandfathered water rights. 

In 2009, Pima County used public bonds to purchase 4,100 acres of the ranch as part of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, and in 2018, the trust purchased 2,500 acres from the First United Realty

How to take action

Sopori Creek is not open to the public. Here are some other ways to help.

This current campaign seeks to purchase additional land from First United Realty to continue that conservation effort. 

“The land trust was very involved in identifying priorities for the (Pima County) bond, and saw on the map there were problems, because (the county) couldn’t buy outside of Pima County,” Freshwater says. “We started a campaign to try and protect that area. … The creek goes right through and drains all of that land that the county invested in.” 

The creek joins with the river near the border of the two counties. During flood events, water courses through the area and into the river — the natural function of the watershed, according to Linda Mayro, the director of Pima County’s Office of Sustainability and Conservation. 

So far, the trust has purchased half of Sopori Creek and Farm and is currently fundraising $1,285,000 needed to buy the remaining acres by the end of October 2024, according to the trust’s website. 

“Santa Cruz County butts into the Sopori Creek watershed for six miles, east to west,” Freshwater says. “From a flood control perspective, from a watershed integrity perspective, and from a wildlife movement corridor perspective, the creek was truncated.” 

Protecting a wash’s water

Laurinda Oswald owns a ranch along the Santa Cruz at the mouth of Sopori Creek, on the east side of I-19. 

Her parents bought the ranch in the ’50s, and every year, the family would spend the summer there. Forty years ago, Oswald moved back permanently, grazing cattle across approximately 2,960 acres. She remembers a major flood in 1983 that sent water coursing through Sopori Creek to burst into the Santa Cruz River. Five or six years ago, a microburst upstream sent another wall of water racing down the wash and into the river. 

This is part of the reason Arizona Land and Water Trust wants to protect this land — further development in the path of floodwaters would only create a greater potential for damage downstream. 

Oswald wants to slow the flow of water through washes so that it stays in the local watershed and assists groundwater levels. 

“By letting washes meander, the wash can capture the water so it sinks into the aquifer,” Oswald says. “My whole thing is to keep the water in the watershed, and there are ways to keep water in Sopori that also raises the water table.”

Oswald is on the trust’s Sopori Creek and Farm campaign advisory committee and also serves on the board of the Sonoran Institute, a Tucson-based conservation nonprofit that has long studied the health of the Santa Cruz River. 

The shallow groundwater system at Sopori Creek means the banks are often lush, flanked by giant cottonwoods and a mesquite bosque. Photo taken as a still from drone footage by Russ McSpadden. Courtesy Arizona Land and Water Trust.

When Sopori Creek does flood, it becomes a “significant stream,” Mayro says. 

“It adds a lot of velocity and volume to the Santa Cruz River, which the (Regional) Flood Control District manages. We have a definite interest in conserving that area and not seeing it hardscaped,” Mayro says, adding that county also wants to work with the trust to slow the flow of the creek. 

Allowing surface water to seep underground is important because groundwater is already a limited resource. 

Usually, this stretch of the Santa Cruz is dry unless it rains, with treated wastewater from Rio Rico tapering off just near Amado, says Luke Cole, the director of the Sonoran Institute’s Santa Cruz River Program.

“What had historically been Sopori Ranch or Farm, this area has just gotten battered by drawdown,” Cole says. 

He adds that groundwater use in the area exceeds the amount of water recharged in a year — a common occurrence throughout Arizona and the Colorado River Basin. 

He points to the Santa Cruz River as an example, describing drawdown there as a decrease in water levels due to “all the straws in the fountain drink slurping for the last drop for a century.” 

“Even when we had lots of water, we thought there was more,” he says. “And (Sopori) is a fascinating microcosm of that.” 

Underground, groundwater from the Sopori Wash sub-basin flows into the Santa Cruz, says Laurel Lacher, owner of Laurel Hydrological Consulting, who worked with the trust to better understand the area’s groundwater. 

Lacher says that near Amado groundwater levels have declined significantly. But around Sopori Creek west of I-19, the groundwater is much closer to the surface, supporting those giant cottonwoods and riparian habitat. 

Because the area currently has no access to the Colorado River water piped into some Arizona communities through the Central Arizona Project, groundwater pumping would be required to support any development around Sopori Creek, Mayro says.

Richard Schust, the president of First United Realty, says the company is accustomed to making adjustments for conservation concerns, and over the years has sold swaths of Sopori ranch land to both Pima County and the Arizona Land and Water Trust. 

This map from Arizona Land and Water Trust shows how Sopori Farm fits into a patchwork of land already protected by the trust and Pima County. Photo courtesy Arizona Land and Water Trust

Before Santa Cruz voters blocked the plans for residential development in 2008, First United says they went through the process of evaluating the area’s water supply with the Arizona Department of Water Resources to ensure water availability for a housing development with as many as 8,000 units. The company also set up a water improvement district to provide water to those future residents, says Ross Wilson, the vice president of First United Realty. 

“The Sopori Domestic Water Improvement District has not served one drop of water since it was formed,” Wilson says. “As the conservation purchases with the Land and Water Trust have come to fruition, we just keep rolling back or shrinking the size of the (district).”

After voters stopped the residential development plans, First United pivoted to dividing the land into smaller 40-acre ranch parcels, Schust says. Rather than providing water to thousands of homes, landowners would use individual wells. 

The trust’s purchase of the property will prevent even that use of the area’s groundwater.

“Until you put the conservation easement on it, all kinds of things can happen,” Freshwater says. “And it doesn’t have to be as dramatic as a golf course or resort hotel.” 

Any kind of development “would be adding that many more straws into the drink, the tiki bowl, and that would potentially limit any further downstream flows of Santa Cruz River water,” Cole says. 

The 1,300 acres of Sopori Creek and Farm is just a piece of the larger Sopori Ranch. The farm has about 300 acres of irrigated farmland. Photo by Johanna Willett

“A place of persistence”

Freshwater’s SUV rumbles past a small white farmhouse situated not far from the property’s own well. A herd of cows regards the car with interest. 

The farmhouse attests to a long history of settlement on Sopori Ranch — Sopori Creek and Farm is just a piece of this historic ranch. 

Toward the end of the 17th century, a Pima Indian group called the “Sobaipuri” farmed in the area, according to the trust. The name of the larger ranch perhaps comes from this name or from the Spanish word sopor, which means drowsiness, according to the 2008 Sopori Ranch Cultural Resources Summary, Pre-acquisition Report by Pima County’s Office of Sustainability and Conservation. 

That report observes that the presence of springs provided a reliable water source that has attracted people throughout the centuries. The area was also part of a land grant from the king of Spain to Tubac Presidio commander Captain Juan Bautista de Anza. The Pima County reportpoints out that “it was called ‘El Ojo del Agua de Sopori’ (Eye of the Water of Sopori) after the Sopori Spring.” 

Other individuals who staked claim to the larger Sopori ranch include Charles Poston and Frederick Ronstadt; members of Tucson’s pioneering Pennington and Elias families; and a grandnephew of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, according to the Pima County report. 

In the 1950s, Ann Boyer Warner — the wife of Warner Bros. founder Jack Warner — purchased Sopori Ranch. Most of the ranch would change hands one more time after Warner’s death before coming into the ownership ofFirst United Realty. 

“Water was available and plentiful (at Sopori), so it attracted people through time,” Mayro says. “These are called places of persistence.” 

And it’s not just humans. The land around Sopori Creek is positioned between mountain ranges including the Santa Rita, Tumacacori and Cerro Colorado mountains, making it a significant wildlife corridor. 

The trust notes on its website that Sopori Creek and Farm, along with the thousands of acres of already-protected ranchland, provides potential habitat for 33 animal species, including the endangered ocelot, lesser long-nosed bat and jaguar and the threatened yellow-billed cuckoo. Freshwater also says you’ll find coatis, badgers, coyotes, mule deer and more. 

The land also hosts 67 plant species, including the endangered Pima pineapple cactus. 

“We have the sky islands that make up the frame of the Santa Cruz River Valley, and they have unique endemic species and migratory animals,” Cole says. “Getting from one part (of the valley) to the next is already perilous given developments and roads, but if there are water resources and washes that animals can use that even occasionally have reliable water, that creates opportunities for ecological richness.” 

Walking through Sopori Creek when the trees have leafed out is like being in another country, says Diana Freshwater. Photo taken as a still from drone footage by Russ McSpadden. Courtesy Arizona Land and Water Trust.

Collaboration is the future for conservation

Both Schust and Freshwater say the trust’s relationship with First United Realty has been a positive one. 

“If somebody tells us something is really significant (about a piece of land), then we feel like if we can do something to make it happen, then it just makes sense in the long run,” says Schust. “We’re only around for so long.” The opportunity to do a deal and sell the property for conservation purposes is a “win-win,” Wilson says. 

Michael McDonald, the executive director of the Arizona Land and Water Trust, says collaboration among environmentalists, developers and agriculturalists that results in this kind of win-win is rare in Arizona. 

“Increasingly, this will need to become a norm if we in Arizona are going to address, for instance, economic health with climate resilience and water conservation,” he says in an email. 

Since the trust entered into an agreement to purchase Sopori Creek and Farm from First United Realty in phases, the organization has raised more than $4.2 million in cash and pledges, according to McDonald. The fundraising the trust is doing now will let it purchase a 372-acre area by the end of October 2023 and the final, 275 acres by the end of October 2024. 

The plan is not to hold onto the land, but rather to turn around and sell it with a conservation easement that would protect the property permanently.

McDonald points out that the use of conservation easements continues to increase both in Arizona and across the United States. 

Ideally, they would partner with an agency to grow bermuda grass for neighboring ranchers or manage an agricultural training center for interested young people to practice sustainable farming. 

“The main benefit of preserving this land is that when we finish buying it and put a conservation easement on it, it will no longer ever be at risk of being developed,” Freshwater says. “Any of the programs that we can put on top of that, that are educational — that’s gravy.” 

The successful purchase of Sopori Creek and Farm will add another 1,300 acres of protected land to the more than 6,500 acres of Sopori Ranch already protected by the trust and Pima County. 

“I think we can learn (from Sopori) that these public-private partnerships for the purpose of conservation are absolutely doable,” Cole says. 

For Mayro, the preservation of ranches such as Sopori not only maintains the watershed, but also prevents urban sprawl that can be costly for a county to service. 

“Ranches hold the natural and cultural landscape together,” Mayro says. “Urban sprawl happens when a ranch fails or a developer buys a ranch for development.” 

Walking through Sopori Creek toward towering cottonwoods, you can tell there’s water somewhere — even if it’s underground. When the trees are fully leafed out, “you could be in another country,” Freshwater says. 

“And then when you pop out of the cottonwood-willow gallery forest, and you’re up on a ridge, it’s cat’s claw and fairy dusters and barrel cacti,” she adds. “It’s like nothing else.”

This article first appeared on AZ Luminaria and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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

Water Desk supports journalism in New Mexico and Rio Grande Basin

Rafting on the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico. Photo by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk

The Water Desk is excited to announce the recipients of new grants to support water journalism connected to New Mexico and the Rio Grande Basin.

From the Rocky Mountains to the U.S.-Mexico border, the grantees will be reporting on a range of critical water issues facing the region, including climate change, public health, pollution, equity, funding, wildfires, infrastructure and more.

The nine awards, totaling $48,430, are being funded thanks to support from the Thornburg Foundation and Santa Fe Community Foundation. The recipients of the grants (in alphabetical order):

Jeremy Miller, 1843 magazine from The Economist

Megan Myscofski, KUNM

Danielle Prokop and Diana Cervantes, Source NM

Martha Pskowski, Inside Climate News and Omar Ornelas, El Paso Times

Sara Van Note, Santa Fe Reporter

Christian von Preysing-Barry, independent

Jeremy Wade Shockley, independent

Jerd Smith, Fresh Water News

Brett Walton, Circle of Blue

We’re grateful to the Thornburg Foundation and Santa Fe Community Foundation for their support of this program. 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’re excited to see the water journalism they produce!

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Upper Colorado River states add muscle as decisions loom on the shrinking river’s future

Flows in the White River (pictured above) and other tributaries of the upper Colorado RIver have declined dramatically and contributed to the precipitous declines of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. (Source: The Water Desk)
Flows in the White River (pictured above) and other tributaries of the upper Colorado RIver have declined dramatically and contributed to the precipitous declines of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. (Source: The Water Desk)

By Nick Cahill, Western Water

The states of the Lower Colorado River Basin have traditionally played an oversized role in tapping the lifeline that supplies 40 million people in the West. California, Nevada and Arizona were quicker to build major canals and dams and negotiated a landmark deal that requires the Upper Basin to send predictable flows through the Grand Canyon, even during dry years.

But with the federal government threatening unprecedented water cuts amid decades of drought and declining reservoirs, the Upper Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are muscling up to protect their shares of an overallocated river whose average flows in the Upper Basin have already dropped 20 percent over the last century.

They have formed new agencies to better monitor their interests, moved influential Colorado River veterans into top negotiating posts and improved their relationships with Native American tribes that also hold substantial claims to the river.

While the Upper Basin has had a joint-bargaining arm in the Upper Colorado River Commission since 1948, the individual states are organizing outside the commission and doing more to look out for their own interests.

Pat Mulroy, who helped shape Colorado River water policy for nearly 30 years as former general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said the moves signal a political shift in the Upper Basin to become a tougher negotiator and force California, Nevada and Arizona to live with less.

“I see [the Upper Basin states] absolutely gearing up and being ready for a full-blown confrontation with the Lower Basin,” Mulroy said.

Unprecedented Federal Action Looms

The 1922 Colorado River Compact divided the river into Upper and Lower Basins and entitled each with 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year. While the Upper Basin routinely uses far less than its yearly apportionment, the Lower Basin commonly uses its full share even during dry years. The discrepancy in usage as drought depletes key reservoirs on the river remains a chief source of discontent between the two Basins, a century after the Compact’s signing.

Currently, the seven Basin states and tribes are negotiating immediate water-use reductions. They must reach a deal in the coming months to fend off the federal government, which is threatening to intervene if the Basin’s water users don’t come up with an acceptable plan to address chronic water shortages.

Long-term drought, rising demand and the changing climate have severely diminished the river’s main reservoirs, Lake Powell behind Glen Canyon Dam on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam near Las Vegas.

A key negotiating priority for the Upper Basin is forcing he Lower Basin to shoulder evaporative losses at Lake Mead (pictured above) and elsewhere downstream of Lee Ferry, the dividing point between the basins. (Source: The Water/Lighthawk)
A key negotiating priority for the Upper Basin is forcing he Lower Basin to shoulder evaporative losses at Lake Mead (pictured above) and elsewhere downstream of Lee Ferry, the dividing point between the basins. (Source: The Water/Lighthawk)

With both reservoirs falling to record-low levels, the Department of the Interior gave the Basin states and tribes an ultimatum: Agree to buoy the reservoirs and keep the giant dams producing hydropower, or we’ll unilaterally decide who takes cuts. Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation directed the parties to trim their combined usage by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet, or 16 percent to 33 percent, of the river’s average annual flow dating back to 2000.

Earlier this month, Interior officials presented three options it may take absent a seven-state consensus. One would cut supply to senior water-rights holders, including California’s Imperial Irrigation District, the biggest single user of Colorado River water. Officials said they will make a final decision this summer and that the revised rules will go into effect next year if the states can’t make a deal.

Mulroy, a senior fellow for climate adaptation and environmental policy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, called the plans “ambitious” and said they would likely spark a lawsuit from California if senior rights are targeted. She said the federal government’s probable goal is to push the states into further negotiations. 

JB Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California, pushed back on the federal proposals and argued that they wrongly shield the Upper Basin.

“The pain is moved around between the three Lower Basin states without even modeling or considering participation from our partners in Mexico or the Upper Basin states,” Hamby said.

In addition to a short-term drought fix, the Basin states and 30 tribes are also scrambling to replace the river’s operating rules, which expire in 2026. The states have a golden opportunity to craft a framework that addresses climate change and the river’s changing hydrology, said Eric Kuhn, a former Colorado water manager and co-author of a book on the 1922 Compact.

“There’s a structural deficit that needs to be solved and we have to go beyond the structural deficit because we allowed reservoirs to get as low as they are without taking action,” he said.

Muscling Up to California and the Lower Basin

California, the largest user of Colorado River water with a 4.4 million acre-feet annual entitlement, has been a dominating presence in the Basin dating back to the 1870s when Palo Verde farmers and miners filed the first claim to the river’s water.  

The federal government, states and tribes are crafting new rules for the dwindling iconic river that serves approximately 40 million people in the U.S. and Mexico. (Source: U.S. Geological Survey)
The federal government, states and tribes are crafting new rules for the dwindling iconic river that serves approximately 40 million people in the U.S. and Mexico. (Source: U.S. Geological Survey)

California lawmakers played a pivotal role in convincing Congress in 1928 to help fund construction of the All-American Canal and Hoover Dam. Nine years later, in 1937, the state created the Colorado River Board of California to protect its water rights.

In the current negotiations over a dwindling river, the Upper Basin states are seeking to maximize their leverage by taking a page from California’s playbook.  

In 2021, the Utah Legislature approved the Colorado River Authority of Utah, a seven-member board created to manage the state’s river interests. Founded during an extended period of population growth, the authority was tasked with improving Utah’s bargaining position on the river. Utah is entitled to 23 percent of the Upper Basin’s river share and uses around 1 million acre-feet per year.

The creation of the authority has given Utah for the first time a united approach to handling Colorado River issues, said Gene Shawcroft, who chairs the authority. He added that the 2021 law removed some red tape and gave the authority more flexibility than the state engineer, who previously led Utah’s river management.

“The state engineer was woefully underequipped to deal with the issues on the river,” said Mulroy, the former Nevada water official. “The [authority] will hopefully provide some level of forum for unified decision-making.”  

Utah diversified the authority in 2022, adding a board seat designated for a tribal member. The inaugural seat is held by Paul Tsosie, an attorney who is a member of the Navajo Nation and previously served as Interior’s Indian Affairs chief of staff.

Pat Mulroy, former general manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority, has helped make water policy on the river for decades. (Source: Water Education Foundation)
Pat Mulroy, former general manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority, has helped make water policy on the river for decades. (Source: Water Education Foundation)

“My service does not replace official Native American tribal consultation, but I will serve as a voice to ensure that Indian Country is included in decisions made by the Colorado River Authority,” Tsosie said in a statement.

As the largest user of river water in the Upper Basin, Colorado is also attempting to increase its political clout.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has asked the Legislature to expand the Colorado River Water Conservation Board and create an executive position within the Colorado Department of Natural Resources that would focus directly on river issues. If lawmakers approve the budget item, Rebecca Mitchell would move from director of the conservation board into the new executive position this summer.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of Colorado lawmakers want to create 15-member task force that would study Colorado River issues. The panel would include the state’s top water officials and managers and representatives from tribal, farming and environmental groups.  

“I see it as the Upper Division states and the Upper Colorado River Commission scaling up to respond to the importance of these negotiations,” said Mitchell, the state’s main river negotiator and representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission.

The river’s main reservoirs are expected to get a boost in the coming months from the Basin’s largest snowpack since 1997, but Mitchell said keeping the pressure on the Lower Basin to rein in its usage is one of Colorado’s top priorities.

“We need to head-on address the overuse in the Lower Basin and provide for a complete accounting of depletions and evaporation,” she said.

Currently, Upper Basin states are charged for evaporation losses but the Lower Basin is not. Federal officials estimate as much as 10 percent of the river’s flow evaporates annually, including more than 1 million acre-feet from the Lower Basin.

Arizona and Nevada have said in the past year that they are open to new rules that would account for water lost to evaporation, seepage and other system leaks in the Lower Basin, but California remains the lone holdout. 

Hamby, California’s new top negotiator, cast the push to pin evaporative losses on California as an oversimplified argument that punishes the state for developing its rights to the river faster than others. He said projects that were developed well after California’s, such as the Central Arizona Project, which serves more than 80 percent of Arizona’s population, have added to the imbalance between what Mother Nature provides and what the Lower Basin states, tribes and Mexico use.   

While he agrees that fixing the structural deficit in the Lower Basin will be a key piece of the ongoing negotiations, Hamby hinted that progress is drying up on an evaporation deal. “The [existing evaporation proposals] would hit California, Mexico and Lower Basin tribes disproportionately hard. Is that an equitable approach?”

Crafting a path for tribes to be included in water policy decisions has been a high priority recently for Colorado as well as Utah.

In March, Lorelei Cloud of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in southwest Colorado became the first tribal member appointed to the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Cloud was also among the tribal participants in a historic forum last August hosted by the Upper Colorado River Commission that focused on tribal water issues.

“It’s essential that the seven Basin states include and consult with the Colorado River Basin tribes in the post-2026 reservoir operations negotiations,” Mitchell said.

New Mexico & Wyoming

Wyoming (14 percent) and New Mexico (11 percent) receive the smallest portions of the Upper Basin’s annual apportionment but are nonetheless looking to play big roles in the discussions.   

To bolster its stake in the river, New Mexico last year reappointed Estevan Lopez, a former Reclamation commissioner, to handle its river negotiations. Lopez, who as Reclamation commissioner helped negotiate the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan that was eventually signed in 2019, said New Mexico wants to see evaporative losses in the Lower Basin settled. 

Estevan Lopez, New Mexico's top river negotiator and former head of the Bureau of Reclamation. (Source: Water Education Foundation)
Estevan Lopez, New Mexico’s top river negotiator and former head of the Bureau of Reclamation. (Source: Water Education Foundation)

Securing federal resources to improve tribal water development, particularly a drinking water pipeline for the Navajo Nation, is another top priority for New Mexico. Lopez said the state is doing more now than ever to involve tribes that hold rights to the Colorado River – Navajo Nation and Jicarilla Apache Nation – in water policy conversations. 

“I think we have as much transparency with the tribes as we’ve ever had and we’re trying to build on it,” Lopez said.

Meanwhile, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon last month approved an advisory committee that will aid the State Engineer’s Office in river issues. The 11-member committee includes farmers, environmentalists, municipal water managers and elected officials. Gordon also approved legislation that funds studies for new water developments and creates a full-time position that will focus partly on Colorado River issues.

The Upper Basin states are digging in, solidifying their bargaining capabilities and pushing for new rules that reflect the West’s changing climate and hydrology. They hope the added focus will result in a new approach that avoids litigation and causes everyone on the river to tighten their belts, regardless of priority rights. 

“Everyone recognizes that we’re going to have to learn to live on less, I think that’s a given,” said Shawcroft, Utah’s top water official. “We’ll get there on a deal there’s no doubt about it, but everyone will have a little less water.”

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Farmers weigh tough choices as uncertain water future looms

LOS LUNAS, NEW MEXICO - SEPTEMBER 6, 2022: George Torres, market manager for the Los Lunas Farmers' Market, assists customers at the SNAP table at the market in Los Lunas, NM on September 6, 2022. CREDIT: Adria Malcolm for New Mexico In Depth
LOS LUNAS, NEW MEXICO – SEPTEMBER 6, 2022: George Torres, market manager for the Los Lunas Farmers’ Market, assists customers at the SNAP table at the market in Los Lunas, NM on September 6, 2022. CREDIT: Adria Malcolm for New Mexico In Depth

By Elizabeth Miller

Sitting at his booth at the Bosque Farms Growers Market, George Torres greeted customers all morning one Saturday last year. Many he knew by name and asked about their harvest, the weather, the water. All around him, vendors sold vegetables, milk, eggs, cookies, cut flowers, and seedlings. One farmer dropped off a bundle of radishes, saying, “That’s all I have yet.” 

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As the July day temperature climbed, another asked Torres to “Turn off the furnace.”  He asked how things were going, and she made a dismissive “Pfffttt.” None of the beets or spinach germinated. It was too hot. 

Torres’ wife, Loretta, was the gardener, not George. She coaxed produce that tasted like small miracles from their backyard.  But he helped her run the markets in Los Lunas starting in 2009 and in Bosque Farms since 2015. She had joined a master gardeners’ group in Los Lunas, and thought the community would benefit from a growers’ market. She drove to Santa Fe to meet with the New Mexico Farmers’ Marketing Association, then organized a community meeting that drew about a hundred people to talk about launching a market, Torres recalled. In April of last year, she made a hanging flower basket for a Saturday market, then began feeling unwell. Torres took her to the hospital in Albuquerque. By Tuesday, she was gone.

“I’ve been maintaining the farmers’ market because I promised her I would,” Torres said of how he spends his Saturday mornings, his eyes wet.

Loretta didn’t want farmers in a situation where they couldn’t sell what they managed to grow amid low water years, hail damage, and insect infestations. She set up the farmers’ market to support them, but also made sure the market supported the community.

A yellow banner at the front of Torres’ table declared “Get your tokens here.” Many of those who stop by carry either Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cards that double their dollars for fresh produce, through a program run by the marketing association, or vouchers from the FreshRx program, through which doctors “prescribe” produce from the market for people with diet-related illnesses.

The “Double up” program, with federal, state, and charitable contributions, tallied 6,000 families benefiting this year, while 600 patients were enrolled in FreshRx, a number expected to reach 1,000 next summer.

“And none of it works without water,” Torres said.

The market would disappear if the irrigation ditches and groundwater wells farmers use ran dry because they would have no produce to sell. Last year, some feared that might happen. Irrigation water arrived late, and ran intermittently. The river dried farther north into Albuquerque than it had in decades. If the rain hadn’t come, irrigation water wouldn’t have, either. 

Many farmers use groundwater wells, rather than surface water from the river, but the system intertwines. Surface water recharges groundwater, so straining the first diminishes the second. (Just ask Texas—which sued New Mexico in 2013 for farmers’ groundwater wells draining the Rio Grande of water owed to lower Rio users.)

The Rio Grande is the fifth-longest river in North America and its basin is home for more than 10.4 million people. Streamflow scenarios through 2099 project a wide range of wet and dry conditions compared to average historic flows, which suggests an uncertain future for water. Overexploitation of water in the Southwest is moving the region toward severe water stress, with growing competition between municipal and agricultural users moving into view.

“Viability of agricultural production is in question over the long-term,” Mike Hamman, state engineer, said at the 2022 Middle Rio Grande Water Advocates annual conference.

As in, whether or how much farmers will be able to continue to produce crops, from chile to pecans. 

Andy Emeanuwa and his son Stephen Emeanuwa of EMS Farms package greens at the farmers’ market in Corrales, NM on November 6, 2022. CREDIT: Adria Malcolm for New Mexico In Depth
CORRALES, NEW MEXICO – NOVEMBER 6, 2022: Andy Emeanuwa and his son Stephen Emeanuwa of EMS Farms package greens at the farmers’ market in Corrales, NM on November 6, 2022. CREDIT: Adria Malcolm for New Mexico In Depth

The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD), which oversees delivery of water to farmers through a web of irrigation ditches between Cochiti and Elephant Butte dams, last year warned farmers to be ready for water to turn on at any hour of any day as their turn came up in line and to be prepared for it not to turn on at all for lengthy stretches. The uncertainty rocked an already tenuous business; farmers came to district meetings asking how they could plant chiles knowing they’d need water every three or four weeks and that water might not come.

The irrigation district has “turned into the evil wizard of Oz,” said Bonnie Gonzales, who farms and manages the Corrales Growers’ Market. She moved to Corrales in 1986 to raise a family, and wanted to grow her own food. Her garden still feeds her family, and now, she also grows flowers to sell on a farm that depends on groundwater wells she knows the river recharges. If that water stops coming, “Where do we go? … And at the end of the day, our food is at risk.”

Gonzales doesn’t just mean what she eats. She means food for the 4,500 customers who come by on busy Sundays to buy from a market that peaks with about 40 vendors in August. The market saw $800,000 in sales in 2021. She and Russell Trujillo, who owns Corrales Classic Farms and sells garlic, onions, tomatoes, chile, sweet potatoes, and carrots in the booth next to Gonzales’, riffed off one another.

“The governor has no idea what’s going on,” Trujillo said.

“No amount of SNAP benefit is going to save these children if we don’t have food or water,” Gonzales said. 

Anyone who doesn’t know this river dries out, changes course, and generally does what it wants to do hasn’t been paying attention, they both said.

“The river has run dry, I don’t know how many times since I’ve been here,” Trujillo said. He moved to the area in 1982, and has kept a garden, at least, since then. All five of his kids have worked at the farm and at the market, and now, he hopes his grandkids will too: Last spring, he started the youngest planting beans.

Last summer, an abundant monsoon eased a forecast for extensive drying. Still, Anne Marken, water operations division manager for the conservancy district, stood up meeting after meeting to tell the board that, without more rain, the river might just barely have enough water to meet the “prior and paramount” demands of the pueblos. In conclusion at a July meeting, she said, “I’ll say, as usual, pray for rain.”

That’s familiar advice to Cecilia Rosacker, executive director of the Rio Grande Agricultural Land Trust, an organization founded at her kitchen table by fellow farmers, ecologists, and conservationists interested in protecting farms and riparian ecosystems. She’s a New Mexico native who grew up on a farm, started the Socorro Farmers’ Market, and now operates a 30-acre organic farm in Polvadera, most of it pasture for raising beef, plus a few acres in chile and mixed vegetables. She recalls decades of cautions that the snowpack wasn’t good and that water would run out.

“I remember the old guys saying, you just keep your head down and keep doing what you’re doing, and you pray for rain, and it almost always comes,” Rosacker said. She’s heard farmers asked if they consider not planting, given dire forecasts: “You can’t sit it out, and you have all this invested in land and equipment and what would you do? … You have two choices if you don’t keep farming: you sell the water rights or you sell the land. So you keep trying and trying and hoping and praying.”

She struggled to decide what to do last year, she said, and considered joining a program that compensates farmers $425 per acre they don’t plant. Farmers fallowed three times as many acres  in 2022 compared to 2021. The Office of the State Engineer secured a special appropriation for $15 million to support that program. 

She chose not to: “I live on my farm and I didn’t want to be in the middle of brown dirt field, and I see how the wildlife benefits from me keeping it green.”  She’d also just invested $10,000 in her well, and so thought, “You might as well get in the game, roll your dice, and see what you got.”

It’s always been a gamble, but it feels like, with the drought, the odds are stacked against farmers. Before the monsoon rains came last year, running her well meant paying for diesel at more than $6 a gallon. What water came down the ditch arrived in “dribbles.” One week, a field that’s usually done in an hour took 10 hours to water.

“And the next day, the rain started, and I haven’t watered since,” she said in July. “That rain was a huge relief. But we also know that any water that’s in the ditches right now, any water that we’re getting is dependent solely on rain, and if the rain doesn’t come, we’re done. So farmers do a lot of praying.”

Jane Sallee of Bar Star Family Gardens assists customers at the farmers’ market in Corrales, NM on November 6, 2022. CREDIT: Adria Malcolm for New Mexico In Depth
CORRALES, NEW MEXICO – NOVEMBER 6, 2022: Jane Sallee of Bar Star Family Gardens assists customers at the farmers’ market in Corrales, NM on November 6, 2022. CREDIT: Adria Malcolm for New Mexico In Depth

Farmers often take the brunt of the complaints about water use; irrigated agriculture accounts for 76% of water use in the state, including 1.2 million acre feet of surface water and 1.1 million acre feet of groundwater, according to 2015 numbers from the Office of the State Engineer. The next largest user group is the public water supply, which used 9% of total withdrawals, with 87,399 acre feet of surface water, and 196,758 acre feet of groundwater.

But those complaints discount the side benefits of irrigated land, like open, green spaces and wildlife, Rosacker said. Drip or sprinkler irrigation systems where water is more conservatively applied to crops might create green spaces, but flood irrigated land, where farmers open the gates and let water flow over fields, comes with unique benefits.

Hundreds of bird species migrate through the Middle Rio Grande, and they rely on riparian habitat along the Rio, including flood-irrigated agricultural lands that function like wetlands. When she wants to check on her watering, she doesn’t search the fields, she just looks for the line of birds: “The ibis are right there, where the water is. And Audubon will tell you, if farms go away, we will lose birds. If flood irrigation goes away, we will lose birds.” (It’s true: Audubon staff do say that.) 

More water-efficient systems like drip irrigation systems would cut off those wetlands.

The way water rights are allocated in the Southwest also discourages conservation, because using less water than your water right allows could see that right lowered for coming seasons.

“People get scared, they don’t want to lose their water right, and so they’ll plant something that’s extremely inefficient,” said Stephanie Russo Baca, a livestock grower who chairs the board for the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.

Getting around that would require legislation to revise the “use it or lose it” clause built into water rights.

There are other shifts farmers could make to conserve water. 

They could use technology to help, like leveling fields so water moves more efficiently through them, and using soil sensors to determine actual soil moisture. But they might also change what they grow: some crops that are planted every year allow farmers the flexibility to skip a growing season and “fallow” the field, or let it rest and the water it would have consumed flow on to other uses in dry years. Others—like orchards—can’t be.

Russo Baca raises rough stock, or bucking bulls, and when water drops, their fields produce less hay. One field that typically yields 100 bales recently put out just 35. It’s easier on her back, she said, but tough on her pocketbook, as hay prices have increased. The result means she has to keep fewer livestock.

“You start butchering them because you can’t afford to feed them,” she said. “Which is sad in a way—you breed up these animals and you have these heifers and want to see how they turn out, but you can’t feed them, so you end up eating them, and then you don’t have that breeding stock.”

The conservancy district doesn’t dictate how people farm, “nor would we want to,” Russo Baca said, and doesn’t prioritize who gets water first, other than the water rights for pueblos. As long as the water is going to “beneficial use”—a crop, livestock, or instream flows for wildlife—then shortages are just shared among everyone.

“We can’t determine if one crop is better than another,” she said. “But is that something that needs to change?”

If it did, that would also require new legislation. And would almost certainly prompt revisiting some of the state’s high-value crops, like pecans, which can require 200 gallons of water each day.

“Maybe you really should consider in the future, hey, let’s plant a dryland crop that’s going to do well here?” she said.

To Rosacker, it’s time to step back and look at the bigger picture: “I think at some point the West is going to have to realize that we’re past capacity.”


This article was supported by The Water Desk, an independent journalism initiative based at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Diverting the Rio Grande into a grown-over, decades-old canal could cut New Mexico’s water debt

A man-made channel built decades ago to expedite Rio Grande waters to Elephant Butte still exists, parallel to the Rio Grande. Credit: Bella Davis.
A man-made channel built decades ago to expedite Rio Grande waters to Elephant Butte still exists, parallel to the Rio Grande. Credit: Bella Davis.

By Elizabeth Miller

Decades ago, Norm Gaume, a water advocate, paddler, and former director of the Interstate Stream Commission, hauled a canoe to central New Mexico, thinking he’d float down the Rio Grande through the Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. But when he arrived, he found no water in the river.

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“None,” he said. “Because it was all in the Low-Flow Conveyance Channel.”

The channel is an obscure chapter in New Mexico’s water history that harkens to the 1950s, when New Mexico faced a growing water debt to Texas and needed to move water downstream more efficiently. The best way, they determined, was to route the water away from the riverbed into a 70-mile, rock-lined, narrow channel that would speed it downstream.

The river flowed into the engineered channel beginning just above Socorro for two decades, until its operation was suspended in the early 1980s. 

Even decades later, groundwater seeps and overflow from farms spill into it, so it’s possible to stand on a bridge and watch the flow of what is essentially an irrigation ditch that once held an entire river.  While the Rio Grande meanders red and muddy through sandbars, the channel is uniformly deep and the water in it swift. Willows, cattails, and tamarisk have grown along the channel’s banks and, beyond the gravel service road that frames it, mature cottonwoods. 

The channel might have remained only an engineering artifact from the mid-20th century, an era when people expected to be able to dominate nature. But New Mexico once again owes Texas a massive water debt, so water managers are considering resurrecting the original purpose of the channel.

Diverting water from the Rio Grande to the channel would move it more easily to the state’s southeastern neighbor, satisfying legal obligations from an 85-year-old compact between New Mexico, Texas and Colorado. 

But the era of dominating nature is gone. The Endangered Species Act, with its protection of a fish species called the Rio Grande silvery minnow, blocks diverting all of the river to the channel as water managers’ predecessors did. When and how much they divert will have to be done with that finger-length fish in mind. 

Still, environmentalists worry water managers won’t get the balance right, particularly as climate change is creating a hotter, drier Southwest, diminishing the amount of water flowing in a river that’s already over-taxed. The move, environmentalists say, could compromise habitat for some of the state’s threatened and endangered species, in addition to dewatering what some consider one of the wildest sections left of the Rio Grande. Some fret that the state is again failing to plan holistically for a future that includes rivers, and a bosque of cottonwood trees that people love. 

Cottonwoods in the Rio Grande bosque turn vivid yellow each fall. Credit: Marjorie Childress
Cottonwoods in the Rio Grande bosque turn vivid yellow each fall. Credit: Marjorie Childress

Problems with the Rio Grande running short of water began almost as soon as New Mexico, Colorado and Texas signed the compact that divided the river’s flow among the states in 1938. In the early 1940s, high water years created a swampy wetland and string of ponds between muddy swells for miles at a time above Elephant Butte Reservoir. The river ceased running downstream, and deliveries to Texas dwindled.

By 1953, water owed to Texas neared 500,000 acre feet (an acre foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land one foot deep, or about seven times the amount of water used annually by the average Albuquerque resident). So the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built the Low-Flow Conveyance Channel, and for most of the 1960s and 1970s, the entire river was re-routed into the channel most of the time. By steering around a thirsty riparian area, the channel saved an estimated 60,000 acre feet of water each year. The state’s water debt to Texas was eliminated by 1972. 

The compact measures water delivered by Colorado to New Mexico at the state line, but water that’s designated for Texas from New Mexico is measured just above Elephant Butte, more than 100 miles upstream of Texas. 

Problems getting river water to Elephant Butte have re-emerged. The reservoir’s dam backs up the river for 40 miles. Where water slows, sediment drops out of it, creating a sprawling, muddy delta. Water reaches that delta and spreads out and evaporates, or sinks into the ground.

Maintaining something that looks like a river corridor requires amphibious machines to routinely dredge a channel. The section of river north of Elephant Butte, the San Acacia reach, has developed a reputation for soaking up all the water sent into it and often dries out.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is looking at ways to speed water through that reach by excavating a deeper river channel and removing some thirsty non-native vegetation. But time constraints have compelled the Bureau and state and local water managers to assess rehabbing the channel to move water through it again.

“We’re almost in an emergency situation in needing to improve our deliveries to Elephant Butte for the compact, so I think, timing-wise, it’s going to be a lot faster to fix up the low-flow conveyance channel,” said Page Pegram, Rio Grande Basin bureau chief for New Mexico’s Interstate Stream Commission.

That the Legislature included $10 million in the just-passed state budget for maintenance to improve river flows into Elephant Butte, including millions likely to be earmarked for the low-flow conveyance channel, demonstrates the seriousness with which New Mexico policymakers are treating the situation. 

Stephanie Russo Baca, who chairs the board of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD), which formed in 1923 to regulate the Rio Grande’s erratic flows for the 174 miles between Cochiti and Elephant Butte dams, calls it a “Hail Mary effort to get the water instead of it just evaporating. … If you’re going to deplete, don’t let it deplete just into the air.”

Preserving what exists now along the Rio—irrigated alfalfa, pecan orchards, fields of cotton, crops of chile, onions, and melons—relies on water. Downstream, Texas uses the water for vegetables, cotton, sugarcane, and the country’s third-largest source for citrus, a crop valued at $200 million a year. When people chastise farmers in the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District for using so much of the Middle Rio Grande’s water, Russo Baca points out, so does the bosque of cottonwood trees and willows lining the riverbank. Statewide, agriculture, including livestock, consumes about 77 percent of the water used. And with climate change, everything—crops, streamside plants, even the air—will suck up more water. 

A map at the Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge shows the low flow conveyance channel running parallel to the Rio Grande. Credit: Bella Davis
A map at the Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge shows the low flow conveyance channel running parallel to the Rio Grande. Credit: Bella Davis

Even with dramatic measures to conserve water in 2021, including shortening the irrigation season, New Mexico missed its downstream delivery requirement to Texas. And despite a plentiful monsoon season in 2022, the total water owed to Texas dropped below 100,000 only because the Interstate Stream Commission was able to negotiate a credit for 32,000 acre feet of water the Bureau of Reclamation released from Elephant Butte in 2011.

That credit has done little to ease minds or reduce pressures to conserve water. If the amount owed reaches 200,000 acre feet, New Mexico could lose control of its water to the U.S. Supreme Court, which handles disputes over the Rio Grande Compact. That’s a crisis water managers are looking to the low-flow conveyance channel to help mitigate. 

“Granted, the way that the low-flow was used back then is not a way in which the district or probably any other water agency envisions using it, but we think there is a middle ground there,” said Casey Ish, water resources specialist with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.

That middle ground might include using the channel during high-intensity monsoon rain storms to capture and fast-track that water downstream. Reclamation is planning a project this spring that would start on that effort by constructing a temporary outfall—a canal that returns unused water—to the river from the channel just south of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. The channel has been functioning as a drain for the river valley. The outfall would reconnect that often pooled water with the river channel so it can make its way to Elephant Butte while  the end of the channel is prepared to expedite water downstream if diversions resume.

Tens of thousands sandhill cranes winter at Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: Bella Davis.
Tens of thousands sandhill cranes winter at Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: Bella Davis.

Modeling work on the Rio Grande assessed how big a difference the channel might make, Gaume said, and the indications were that the increased water delivered through the channel roughly matched the amount of water gained by eliminating about half the irrigated agriculture in the middle Rio Grande valley. 

“So it’s a big deal,” he said. “And always has been a big deal.” 

Mike Hamman, previously the conservancy district’s director and now the state engineer, also lists re-opening the channel as a way to address “high loss” in that reach of the river but agrees it has to be done in an environmentally conscious way. The channel predates the Endangered Species Act and wasn’t operated before with the wellbeing of the Rio Grande silvery minnow, one of the river’s flagship endangered species, in mind.

“The LFCC today would likely never function as it did in the 1960s and 1970s due to the environmental impacts,” Jason Casuga, CEO and chief engineer of the MRGCD, explained via email to Sen. Martin Heinrich’s staff shortly after a meeting to discuss a water conservation program aimed at farmers. 

“We’d like to use it differently, so it’s not essentially drying the river in that reach,” Pegram agreed. “I don’t think anyone wants to operate it without considering environmental impact.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is “definitely involved” in conversations around reopening this channel, said Debra Hill, large river restoration and recovery program supervisor with the agency. It is helping to identify where the river provides habitat for a trio of endangered and threatened species: the Rio Grande silvery minnow, southwestern willow flycatcher, and yellow-billed cuckoo. So far, none of the work to remove brush and maintain roads along the channel looks likely to injure endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow—it’s never been good habitat for them—and the one nesting Southwestern willow flycatcher in the area was unlikely to be disturbed by the work, according to the Service’s analysis for the Bureau of Reclamation.

Where the river itself is not providing that habitat, maybe it would be okay to route a portion of the river into the channel, Hill said. Generally, the agency prioritizes working in the river channel itself, even when ditches might be a faster way of moving water downstream.

The Rio Grande has always been a boom-and-bust waterway, with wet years followed by dry years. But the Southwest is entering uncharted territory. 

“I don’t think we can look at our historical data and make decisions into the future anymore,” said Hill. “We have to have a paradigm shift in how we look at water in the middle Rio Grande, and probably the entire state, and probably the entire West. We’re going to have to have a paradigm shift to realize, we live in a desert, and it’s only going to become more of a desert.”

To environmentalists, the idea of reopening the channel prompts a slew of questions and concerns, most of which hinge on whether these water management institutions are looking at the bigger ramifications in ways that, historically, they haven’t. 

Looking elsewhere in the Rio Grande Basin, there’s a stack of instances where the river has been abandoned. Downstream of Elephant Butte, it flows only in rare floods or while delivering irrigation water. Below El Paso, all the river’s water flows through irrigation ditches, leaving a dry channel. The “Forgotten Reach” through Texas, is even more rarely wet and is largely overgrown.

Given the compact crisis, Paul Tashjian, director of freshwater conservation for Audubon Southwest, is concerned that the channel might be revived and all the water entering the San Acacia reach, just north of Elephant Butte, redirected into it. 

“That would be a dead river,” he said. 

What might rank among the most important components of the river to preserve isn’t a perpetual flow, but how the water level surges with melting snow in spring.

Everything along the Rio Grande evolved with an erratic river that ran big and high with snowmelt in spring, then retreated. Cottonwood seeds only sprout on muddy banks. Willow seedlings likewise rely on damp ground. Birds nest above that snowmelt-thickened river. The silvery minnow spawns its eggs into the current, but they need to drift into slower channels and pockets of stiller water in the floodplain to grow up. 

Restoring the Rio Grande silvery minnow has required water for the fish to live in, but it’s also prompted federal and state agencies to re-engineer a “pulse flow” of water in spring to mimic snowmelt runoff that cues minnows to spawn. To do that, they release water from dams upstream timed to boost flows the way melting snow would.

“If you look historically, that spring pulse was the ecologic driver. That is how the system functions,” Tashjian said. “If you could maintain that, there are so many species that are keyed into that—it’s not just the minnow, it’s the cottonwoods and the songbirds.”

At the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in December, a global gathering on staving off the rampant loss of nature, biodiversity advocates built a giant Jenga tower to symbolize the notion that all these fish, birds, and plants are like building blocks. Only so many pieces can be lost before the whole tower topples, and which and where and how many species the planet can lose without jeopardizing human life, too, isn’t any clearer than the next move in that game.

Gina Della Russo worked as an ecologist for the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for 17 years, aiding native plants in reestablishing on about 4,000 acres. The wildlife refuge also relocated the river channel away from the low flow conveyance channel into areas where it will build backwaters and wetlands for fish and bolster habitat for meadow jumping mouse, southwestern willow flycatchers, and yellow-billed cuckoo. One of her questions has been how reactivating the low flow conveyance channel might affect those nascent wetlands. 

“As a short-term solution, under the conditions we’re in right now, you try whatever you can to get water balance,” she acknowledged. “It’s a human condition, we react, so we think of things that may get us out of problems for a year or two, but will they actually solve the long-term problems of the river in this reach?”

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Utah’s Suicide Pact With the Fossil Fuel Industry

The White River in Northeastern Utah emerges from the Colorado mountains into the Uinta Basin. Russel Albert Daniels
The White River in Northeastern Utah emerges from the Colorado mountains into the Uinta Basin. Russel Albert Daniels

By Stephanie Mencimer

The GPS coordinates weren’t especially helpful last May as we drove across the remote Tavaputs Plateau in Utah’s Uinta Basin. Cell service was spotty in the vast expanse of land crosshatched with unpaved roads identified on the map only as “Well Road 4304735551” or “Chevron Pipeline Road.” Photographer Russel Albert Daniels and I had set off that morning from Vernal (population 10,241), in search of a 15-square-mile plot of undeveloped land purchased in 2011 by the Estonian-government-owned energy company Enefit.

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On that land, the Estonians had hoped to create the first commercial-scale oil shale mining and processing facility in the United States, with a 320-acre industrial plant that would process 28 million tons of strip-mined shale and turn it into 50,000 barrels of oil every day for 30 years. Rich with traditional oil and gas reserves, the Uinta Basin also sits atop the largest oil shale reserve in the world, a 6 million-year-old geologic formation where Utah officials estimate a tantalizing 77 billion barrels of potentially recoverable oil lie just waiting to be exploited.

At a public meeting back in 2013, former Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) told the Deseret News that the “exciting” Enefit project “has the potential to create significant revenue and jobs here in Utah and help with energy independence nationwide.” Cody Stewart, an energy adviser to former Governor Gary Herbert, called it “a game changer” with “the potential to make Utah a significant player on the energy map.”

Mined oil shale at the Enefit White River Mine in northeastern Utah. Russel Albert Daniels
Mined oil shale at the Enefit White River Mine in northeastern Utah. Russel Albert Daniels

The prognosis was not quite as bright in Estonia. Two years after the purchase, Estonian parliament members warned that the government risked losing $100 million on the deal because early lab tests in Germany had failed to affordably produce oil from Utah’s shale. Ingo Valgma, director of the mining department at the Tallinn University of Technology, told an Estonian journalist that the technology for producing oil in Utah was not a few years away but decades. Nonetheless, the Estonians stayed put and Utah’s elected officials sallied forth, optimistically insisting that oil shale riches were just around the corner.

As Russel and I bumped along the dirt roads of eastern Utah in search of Enefit’s land, it became painfully obvious that the Estonians had overlooked a major problem when they plunked down $42 million to acquire 30,000 acres of sagebrush in the basin: water, or the lack of it. Pulling a single barrel of oil out of shale requires between two and four barrels of water. The Uinta Basin lies within an arid, desert climate that averages about 8 inches of rain annually at the wettest of times. What little it does have comes from the critical watershed of the dying Colorado River, which more than 40 million people in the West rely on for agriculture and drinking water.

Enefit’s land sits just 40 miles from where the White River meets the Green, the largest and most important tributary of the Colorado River. To mine and process oil shale, Enefit hoped to suck as much as 11,000-acre-feet of water out of the Green River every year—about 10 million gallons a day, or enough to supply the daily needs of 90,000 households downstream in Arizona. (An acre-foot equals about 326,000 gallons or enough to cover about a football field with a foot of water.) Unfortunately, perhaps, for Enefit, “That water, more than likely, doesn’t exist,” says Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center.

Last summer, during one of the driest years of a 23-year mega drought in the West, the federal government told the seven Colorado River basin states they must come up with a plan to reduce water consumption by up to 40 percent of the river’s current volume, or enough to serve more than 6 million households for a year. This year, federal water managers plan to cut deliveries from the river by up to 25 percent. Record snowfall this winter may head off some of the worst of the cuts, but the runoff will only partially refill badly depleted Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoirs. The water crisis remains urgent, and the long-term prospects for the Colorado are grim.

The White River, the Uinta Mountains, and the Deseret Power Plant in the background. Russel Albert Daniels
The White River, the Uinta Mountains, and the Deseret Power Plant in the background. Russel Albert Daniels

The dire state of the Colorado River hasn’t stopped Utah officials from enthusiastically supporting policies to encourage Enefit’s oil shale production and all sorts of other thirsty, ill-conceived fossil fuel projects in the Uinta Basin in what some environmentalists have dubbed a “suicide pact.” These projects and priorities generally, and Enefit’s in particular, illustrate how a state, run largely by people who don’t believe in climate change, still presses ahead with carbon-belching fossil-fuel developments that, if successful, will only exacerbate the megadrought that has brought the Colorado River—and the West—to the brink of disaster.

“The whole connection between water and climate change, and conventional energy development and climate change, is not front and center” in Utah, says Udall. “I’ve given talks to high-level people in Utah who refuse to acknowledge the relationship between climate change and the drought and the American West.”

In 1861, LDS church president Brigham Young assembled a group of missionaries in Salt Lake City and ordered them to set off for the Uinta Basin to create new Mormon settlements in the region—lest the “Gentiles” get there first. A few months later, the scouting party reported back gloomily that the basin was “one vast contiguity of waste, and measurably valueless, excepting for nomadic purposes, hunting grounds for Indians, and to hold the world together.” Young suggested to President Abraham Lincoln that he use the wasteland for a Ute tribe reservation—and that’s what happened.

About 20 years later, however, a white settler named Mike Callahan built a new cabin just over the border in Colorado next to Parachute Creek. He used pretty, local rocks for his fireplace and chimney. Legend has it that the first time he lit a fire on the hearth, the cabin burned down. The pretty rocks turned out to be flammable oil shale. Ever since, speculators have been trying to figure out how to monetize those massive shale deposits in Utah. Still, it wasn’t until the oil shocks of the 1970s that the federal government got involved.

A vacant office and warehouse at the Enefit White River Mine in northeastern Utah. Russel Albert Daniels
A vacant office and warehouse at the Enefit White River Mine in northeastern Utah. Russel Albert Daniels

In 1974, the Department of Interior leased two large parcels of public land in the Uinta Basin that Enefit now controls to a consortium of oil companies that became the White River Shale Company. The Carter administration created loan subsidies and other supports to encourage oil shale mining, and construction began on a coal-fired power plant to support the future industry. In 1982, the White River Shale company pledged to invest $100 million into the operation and began the construction of a new mine in the basin.

Just three years later, global oil prices collapsed, Ronald Reagan cut off federal subsidies for alternative fuel development, and the company officially abandoned the mine. But in 2005, Congress passed a bill pushed by President George W. Bush and Utah Republican senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett that declared oil shale an “important domestic resource” for national security and directed the federal government to accelerate its development.

The US Bureau of Land Management moved to reopen the mine in 2006 and leased the 160-acre site to a company backed by an Alabama coal firm called Oil Shale Exploration to conduct research on oil shale processing. “We are committed to being in the oil shale business for years and years to come,” promised managing partner Dan Elcan at the time. The company lasted five years. In 2011, Enefit bought all the defunct company’s assets, including the White River mine lease and 30,000 acres of private land nearby where it planned to open a shale processing plant.

One need only look at Estonia, the world’s leader in oil shale mining, to see what would happen to a Colorado River watershed dominated by this industry. With 70 percent of the country’s energy supply from oil shale, Estonia accounts for the second-highest per capita CO2 emissions in all of Europe. The reason? Oil shale has about the same energy density as a potato. Getting useable oil from it requires heating a lot of rocks to extremely high temperatures, a process that emits between 25 to 75 percent more C02 emissions than conventional oil drilling. That’s why Enefit’s Utah development was met with stiff opposition from environmentalists, who see the project as a potentially catastrophic “carbon bomb.”

A closed mine at the Enefit White River Mine in northeastern Utah. Russel Albert Daniels
A closed mine at the Enefit White River Mine in northeastern Utah. Russel Albert Daniels

In 2010, the late activist Randy Udall (brother of CSU’s Brad Udall) decried oil shale mining in Utah as “folly.” He told the Deseret News, “If someone told you there were a trillion tons of tater tots buried 1,000 feet deep,” he asked, “would you rush to dig them up?”

Russel and I wanted to better understand the state of Enefit’s Utah project, which over the past decade, has been the subject of much litigation by environmentalists and a lot of hype by Utah officials. So we hopped into my rented, white Toyota Tacoma and headed out to the proposed strip-mining site. Driving south on Highway 45, we crossed over the mighty Green River equipped with only a vague sense of what we were looking for. The site is so remote that even most of the environmentalists who’d been fighting the project have never actually visited it. Enefit’s US CEO works from an office 200 miles away in Salt Lake City and was unable to give us a tour.

We passed the breathtaking canyon overlooking the White River and dodged some wild horses wandering the road. After about 40 desolate miles, a smokestack rose up from unnatural, shimmering ponds like Oz in the desert—the massive coal-fired power plant built in the ‘80s to support oil shale mining. From there, we searched for an unpaved road that was supposed to take us somewhere close to the Enefit site—or, if we overshot the mark, to a ghost town called Dragon that had once been a gilsonite mining hub. Overshoot we did, but instead of finding the ghost town, we accidentally drove through the gates of the old White River shale mine, which the Bureau of Land Management leases to Enefit.

Inside the compound, we found mountains of rainbow-colored shale, rusting industrial equipment, and a low-slung office building slowly becoming one with the sagebrush—the abandoned wreckage of decades’ worth of failed efforts to squeeze oil from rocks. A sign on the chain link fence surrounding the mine entrance offered many dire warnings: “Danger, Open Mine, Stay Away, Bad Air, Unstable Workings,” a relic of a 1995 explosion that killed one man and critically injured two others who’d been working to seal up the mine.

Deseret Power Plant in the Uinta Basin in Bonanza, Utah. Russel Albert Daniels
Deseret Power Plant in the Uinta Basin in Bonanza, Utah. Russel Albert Daniels

One thing we didn’t find among those piles of rocks was any evidence that oil had been produced there. Ever. The rocks gave off a faint odor of petroleum, but from our vantage point, the Estonian endeavor appeared to be nothing but a rural development fantasy. “Oil shale has been called the fuel of the future for the last 150 years,” says Michael Toll, an attorney with the Grand Canyon Trust, a nonprofit group that is currently suing BLM over the Enefit project. “It’s always the next big thing, but the economics of it have never made it profitable.”

Before Colorado River water gets to the alfalfa farmers in Arizona, the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas, or California’s Imperial Valley almond growers, much of it passes through the oil and gas fields of the Uinta Basin by way of the Green River. The Colorado’s biggest tributary, the Green River starts in Wyoming’s Wind River mountains and travels more than 700 miles down through Dinosaur National Monument. It dips briefly into Colorado before transversing the Tavaputs plateau and eventually meets up with the Colorado in Canyonlands National Park.

The bridge at Ouray, Utah crosses the Green River near the confluence of the Duchesne River and Green River. The Green River is a main tributary of the Colorado River. Russel Albert Daniels
The bridge at Ouray, Utah crosses the Green River near the confluence of the Duchesne River and Green River. The Green River is a main tributary of the Colorado River. Russel Albert Daniels

One day during our tour of the Uinta Basin, we got an aerial view courtesy of Steve Meyer, a former longtime Indian Health Service doctor who moonlights as a volunteer pilot for the nonprofit conservation group Light Hawk. From the window of his little Cessna, we traced the path of the Green through a plateau pockmarked with thousands of both working and abandoned oil and gas wells dating back to the first gusher in 1948.

For decades, Utah has treated the Green River as both water supply and sewer system for the basin’s fossil fuel industry. From the air, we could see the oil pumpjacks that operate just yards away from the riverbank in the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, home of a hatchery for endangered Colorado River fish. Oil wells have leaked into or near the river with some regularity, including one blowout in 2014 that sent an oily sheen so far down the river that visitors in Canyonlands National Park noticed it. The Biden administration has recently opened up more public land near the river to conventional oil and gas leasing, which is booming again thanks to the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, state officials have allocated millions of dollars to build infrastructure to increase fossil fuel production in the Green River watershed. Some of the funds have come from the Permanent Community Impact Fund Board (CIB), a pot of money created from royalties from oil and gas leases on public lands. The fund is supposed to help mitigate the impact of mineral extraction on local communities. The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity reported in 2021 that over the previous two years, rural counties in the basin had asked the CIB for more than $60 million for such projects as upgrading water tanks, sewer lines, and fire hydrants—some needed because of the drought—but received none of it. Instead, since 2009, the CIB has spent millions on fossil-fuel infrastructure, like $34 million on a “road to nowhere” across the basin to service oil fields and a tar sand mine on state-owned land that has never—and probably never will—produce any commercially significant amounts of oil.

Fracking sites near the White River. Russel Albert Daniels
Fracking sites near the White River. Russel Albert Daniels

The CIB has also contributed nearly $28 million to developing the controversial Uinta Basin Railway, which would transport oil from the Uinta Basin to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The project could allow oil companies to quadruple production in the basin, while potentially despoiling up to 400 streams in the Colorado River watershed—and that’s before there’s an oil spill or derailment. In 2021, Uintah County voted to seek nearly $40 million in CIB funding to subsidize the construction of a new refinery in the basin—a development that would require about 1.5 barrels of water to produce a single barrel of oil. 

Enefit might benefit from all of those projects. But to produce oil, what it really needs more than roads or a train is water. On paper, Enefit has plenty of it. Among the assets of the defunct oil shale company Enefit acquired back in 2011 were its crucial rights to water in the Green and White rivers. Unfortunately, water rights must be put to “beneficial use” within a certain time frame—50 years in this case—or they revert to the state. Enefit’s water rights, which dated back to 1965, were going to expire before it used them to produce even a barrel of oil.

So in 2012, Enefit made a deal with Deseret Power, which owns the Bonanza coal-fired power plant built in the ‘80s in anticipation of the oil shale boom that never happened. It transferred its water rights to the utility for $10. And then, under a state law that applies only to utilities, the power company renewed the water rights beyond the 50-year window and allegedly contracted with Enefit to return all that water to the company. In 2021, environmentalists filed an administrative protest with the state seeking to void those water rights, arguing that the power company is not putting its water to beneficial use under this arrangement. (The contract between Enefit and Deseret Power has never been released publicly, and Enefit is not a party to the water rights protest; the case is still pending.)

Regardless of where it acquired water rights on paper, Enefit’s remote industrial site is still a long way from any actual water. Ultimately, the company hopes to run a pipeline across more than 20 miles of public land to get to the Green River, where it could pull out the 10 million gallons of water a day it needs to process shale. But for that, it needs permission from the feds.

The company applied for such a right of way during the Obama administration, and in late 2016, the Bureau of Land Management issued a favorable draft environmental impact statement on the application. According to the Grand Canyon Trust’s Michael Toll, the environmental review was “woefully inadequate,” but state and local officials, predictably, were thrilled with the outcome. “Enefit American Oil has proved themselves to be a welcome corporate citizen in our community,” wrote the Uintah County Commission in a letter to BLM. “This project has the potential to represent a significant source of jobs and economic development in our region.”

A pumpjack near Vernal, Utah. Russel Albert Daniels
A pumpjack near Vernal, Utah. Russel Albert Daniels

In 2017, President Donald Trump tapped Utah native Brian Steed as the BLM’s acting director. Steed had previously worked as chief of staff for Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), a congressman once called “Glenn Beck on steroids.” Stewart doesn’t believe humans cause climate change, and the oil and gas industry has been his biggest source of campaign funds.

“We are proud to do our part to move this important energy project forward,” Steed said in a 2018 press release announcing the BLM approval of Enefit’s application. A few months later, Utah Governor Gary Herbert appointed Steed to head the Utah Division of Natural Resources, where until last summer, he oversaw both state regulation of the oil and gas industry and its water policy. In 2019, environmental groups sued the BLM alleging it had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by approving Enefit’s proposed utility corridor. The case is currently languishing in federal court, where it hasn’t even had a hearing on the merits. Enefit has said in legal filings that it could simply truck water from the Green River to its site in the basin and process shale without approval for the pipeline. But it hasn’t done that, a clear sign that the company isn’t in any big hurry to create Estonia in the Utah desert.

Nonetheless, Enefit’s massive but as yet nonexistent oil shale operation in the basin has been used to help justify the construction of the Uinta Basin Railway, the oil train greenlighted by the Biden administration but opposed by most of the Colorado congressional delegation because of its potential impact on the Colorado River. Enefit USA CEO Ryan Clerico wrote a letter to the federal Surface Transportation Board in 2019 saying the railway “would provide a valuable means to transport product oil to market and to move equipment and other materials associated with an oil shale industry into the region in a safe, efficient, and environmentally responsible manner.” Railway promoters quoted the letter in subsequent filings with the board, which then cited the letter in its 2021 decision approving the railway construction as evidence that it was economically viable. Counties in the Uinta Basin will soon issue $2 billion in tax-free bonds to finance its construction.

“We have a high concentration of schemers and dreamers” in Utah, laments Steve Bloch, the legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Association. “They are reinforced by the dominant religion and reinforced by the politics. That kind of mentality has a very firm grip over local and state politicians, our members of Congress. It makes transitioning away from fossil fuels very difficult.”

While Utah tries to amp up fossil fuel development in the state, Estonia, oddly enough, says it’s moving towards a more carbon-neutral future. In March this year, the Baltic nation elected a new government, which tapped a new CEO for Eesti Energia, Enefit American Oil’s parent company. One of his goals is to reduce carbon emissions and to focus on renewable energy. The company has also discovered a more accessible supply of oil than shale: plastic trash, from which it can produce three times more oil than it can get from mining shale.

Enefit is now exploring putting its Uinta Basin real estate to more sustainable uses, like solar power generation—a promising enterprise in a place with no water but lots of unobstructed sunshine. “We’ve looked at alternative development opportunities unrelated to oil shale, including renewable possibilities,” Enefit’s Ryan Clerico told me.

Gas development on the White River. Russel Albert Daniels
Gas development on the White River. Russel Albert Daniels

The company also recently helped the University of Utah secure an $8 million Department of Energy grant to research carbon capture in the basin by pledging to make some of its land available to the researchers. “Enefit maintains aggressive decarbonization goals, including reduction of the group’s energy production CO2 intensity by 43 percent during the current five-year strategic planning period,” Clerico wrote to the university in July. “This research project is consistent with our larger corporate goal of a ‘Journey to Zero’ emissions.”

Back at Enefit’s White River mine, Russel and I took a break from exploring and sat in the bed of our rented pickup truck to eat sandwiches and chips purchased on the reservation from the Ute Oil gas station. The wind blew gently. It was a perfectly clear beautiful spring day in a wild, remote region whose horizon is often marred with Los Angeles levels of smog because of all the oil and gas drilling. Kestrels surfed the thermals high above in wide open skies. Even surrounded by ancient rusting winches and other mining equipment, the spot didn’t feel like a wasteland. Smaller versions of the dramatic sandstone formations found in many of Utah’s most famous national parks sheltered us with a level of solitude that’s hard to find in modern American life.

Vernal, Utah, Main Street. Russel Albert Daniels
Vernal, Utah, Main Street. Russel Albert Daniels

When we reluctantly got back in the truck to head back to Vernal, we discovered, to our horror, that the gate on the only road out of the mine was closed and locked. We were trapped, miles from civilization, and more importantly, from water. Fortunately, I had a few bars of cell service. I made an embarrassed call to Clerico and confessed to our misadventure. That’s how I discovered the real economic activity currently going on at the Enefit site: sheep grazing. Clerico laughed and told me that a local rancher must have unwittingly locked us in before heading home for the evening. The amused rancher kindly freed us, and as the setting sun turned the sandstone cliffs a riot of color, we retraced our route and headed back to Vernal to quench our thirst—with a beer.

This article was supported by The Water Desk, an independent journalism initiative based at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. Aerial support provided by LightHawk. This story has been updated.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Stream restoration bill watered down

Workers construct a post-assisted log structure or PALS, on the Brush Creek Valley Ranch and Open Space south of the town of Eagle. These structures mimic large woody debris like a downed cottonwood and are designed to promote and restore natural stream functioning in areas that have been degraded. Photo courtesy of Eagle County Open Space
Workers construct a post-assisted log structure or PALS, on the Brush Creek Valley Ranch and Open Space south of the town of Eagle. These structures mimic large woody debris like a downed cottonwood and are designed to promote and restore natural stream functioning in areas that have been degraded. Photo courtesy of Eagle County Open Space

By Heather Sackett

Colorado lawmakers may pass a stream-restoration bill this session, but it won’t be the one proponents and environmental groups were hoping for.

A bill aimed at making it easier for stream-restoration projects that mimic beaver activity to take place has been gutted after stakeholders couldn’t reach an agreement, underscoring how difficult it is for environmental interests to gain a toehold under Colorado’s system of water law.

An original draft of Senate Bill 270 clarified that restoration projects do not fall under the definitions of a diversion, storage or a dam; are presumed to not injure downstream water rights; and do not need to go through the lengthy and expensive water-court process to secure a water right or augmentation plan.

Project proponents would have had to file an information form with the Division of Water Resources (DWR) showing that projects would stay within the historical footprint of the floodplain before it was degraded and didn’t create new wetlands. Anyone, including downstream water users who believed the project would injure their water rights, could then challenge the project plans by filing a complaint.

The types of projects that the original bill aimed to address are known as low-tech, process-based restoration and include things such as beaver-dam analogs (BDAs). These temporary wood structures consist of posts driven into the streambed with willows and other soft materials woven across the channel between the posts.

By pooling water on small tributaries in the headwaters, these process-based restoration projects act as if rehydrating a dry sponge and restore watersheds to a more natural condition before they were degraded by human activities. These projects can improve water quality, raise the water table, and create a buffer against wildfires, drought and climate change. The idea is that by creating appealing habitat in areas that historically had beavers, the animals will recolonize and continue maintaining the health of the stream.

But the watered-down version of the bill that made it out of committee and is up for a second reading in the House on May 3 no longer addresses these types of projects. After amendments removed language referring to these projects, the bill now only includes minor stream-restoration activities such as bank stabilization or restructuring a channel to recover from wildfire or flood impacts.

“The stuff that got taken out was the projects that would reconnect the channel and the floodplains and push water out of the channel in a way that would saturate the meadow and potentially change the hydrology,” said Kelly Romero-Heaney, assistant director for water policy at the Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “Those projects are very much intended to maximize the ecological uplift from a stream restoration project. They are also the projects that gave the most heartburn to the water community.”

DNR staff and environmental groups were the proponents of the original legislation. If stream-restoration projects were required to secure a water right and spend money on an expensive augmentation plan, in which water is released to replace depletions that it causes, it could discourage these types of projects. Currently, proposals are evaluated by division engineers, who determine whether an augmentation plan is needed.

Two PALS on the Brush Creek Valley Ranch and Open Space south of the town of Eagle help restore natural stream functioning in areas that have been degraded by ranching and grazing. Eagle County Open Space installed 13 on a half-mile stretch of Brush Creek last fall. Photo courtesy of Eagle County Open Space
Two PALS on the Brush Creek Valley Ranch and Open Space south of the town of Eagle help restore natural stream functioning in areas that have been degraded by ranching and grazing. Eagle County Open Space installed 13 on a half-mile stretch of Brush Creek last fall. Photo courtesy of Eagle County Open Space

Agricultural concerns

Some agricultural water users were concerned that keeping water on the landscape for longer could potentially injure their downstream water rights by slowing the rate of runoff and creating more surface area for evaporation.

“Any time you’re talking about water and changing things in the water system, you run the risk of impacting water rights and the doctrine of prior appropriation, which is my guiding star when it comes to water issues,” state Sen. Cleave Simpson, a Republican, said at a Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee hearing April 13. Simpson, a sponsor of the bill, is a rancher who represents District 6.

Prior appropriation is the cornerstone of Colorado water law in which the oldest water rights have first use of the river.

Austin Vincent, general counsel and director of public policy for the Colorado Farm Bureau, said the original bill would have placed an unfair and expensive burden on water rights holders to file a complaint and prove they were being injured by a stream-restoration project.

“It takes money to get an attorney and an engineer to prove your water right was injured,” he said. “The Farm Bureau is happy we are having this conversation, but we need to make sure this policy is done right. With the prior appropriation system being the law of the land here in Colorado, we need to make sure that’s not eroded.”

Pitkin County Commissioner Kelly McNicholas Kury testified at the committee hearing, expressing the county’s strong support for the original draft of the bill.

“Our western rivers are the lifeblood of our state and they are in crisis,” she said. “We should all be committed to restoring our rivers to a healthy and thriving state.”

Pitkin County has funded a summer program with the U.S. Forest Service for a beaver inventory in the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River, which could be the first step toward reintroducing the animals.

During negotiations on bill amendments, some groups had floated the idea of a cap that would place a limit on how much new surface area of water that restoration projects were allowed to create. But a too-small cap didn’t appeal to environmental groups.

“The cap became the dynamite stick in the water community dialogue,” said Abby Burk, western rivers region program manager for Audubon Rockies. “If we had gone forward with these caps, we would have caged stream restoration, so it was better to pause.”

Legislators have said they plan to revisit the issue in the interim committee and perhaps again next session with a new bill addressing process-based restoration projects.

This PALS on the Brush Creek Valley Ranch and Open Space south of the town of Eagle mimics a downed cottonwood. The Division 5 Engineer’s office said these post-assisted log structures don’t injure downstream water rights. Photo courtesy of Eagle County Open Space
This PALS on the Brush Creek Valley Ranch and Open Space south of the town of Eagle mimics a downed cottonwood. The Division 5 Engineer’s office said these post-assisted log structures don’t injure downstream water rights. Photo courtesy of Eagle County Open Space

Eagle County project

Staff from Eagle County Open Space learned firsthand the issues that can arise with stream-restoration projects, when they planned for 13 beaver-dam analogs to restore a half-mile section of Brush Creek that had seen intense ranching and grazing. The creek had been straightened and disconnected from its floodplain, and the riparian and aquatic habitat was impaired.

County staff submitted their plans to DWR, which told them they would have to get a plan for water replacement, or augmentation, to replace the water that would be evaporated from the small ponds created by the project.

“It appears the BDAs associated with this project will result in a series of impoundments in ponds/pools that will result in additional evaporation from increased surface area that will injure downstream water rights,” the response from DWR reads.

Getting an engineer to model the amount of water lost, then implementing a plan to replace that water was cost-prohibitive for the county, said Peter Suneson, open-space manager for Eagle County.

“Modeling a leaky beaver dam is doable, but you’re going to end up throwing a lot of money at it and you still have to find water to put back in the creek,” he said.

Instead of the BDAs, Eagle County instead moved forward with another low-tech, process-based project that DWR did not have a problem with: post-assisted log structures (PALS). These mimic large woody debris — a downed cottonwood tree, for example — that is affixed to a streambank and extends into the channel but does not span the entire waterway.

According to DWR, as long as PALS do not funnel water away from a diversion structure such as an irrigation headgate and do not impound water, they will not injure downstream users.

“We got 13 PALS in last fall and we are going to do that again this fall,” Suneson said.

It was exactly these types of projects that drafters of the original bill were hoping to make exempt from the water-court process, but which remain evaluated on a case-by-case basis by division engineers. But as drought and climate change have tightened their grip on Colorado, resulting in less water to go around, even restoration projects that everyone agrees are beneficial to the environment can be contentious.

“The entrenched interests like to see the status quo protected and preserved and those newer types of water uses, whether it be recreational or environmental, are at the end of the line,” said Drew Peternell, director of Trout Unlimited’s Colorado Water Program. “It’s a tough uphill battle to pass legislation that allows water to be used for those newer values.”

Aspen Journalism is a nonprofit, investigative news organization that covers water, environment and social justice.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

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