Water managers from across the Colorado River Basin are preparing to negotiate new rules for allocating the river’s dwindling flow and sharing the pain of a deepening shortage. They’re adapting the 100-year-old Colorado River Compact to a river that little resembles the bountiful gusher that negotiators from seven states and the federal government in 1922 thought—or hoped—would bless the Southwest forever. The stakes rise with every foot that Lake Mead and Lake Powell fall, as the states and the water users within them recognize they’re due for a tighter squeeze.
“If we look at the compact today and ask ourselves, ‘Was it equitable given 2022 values?’ No, it wasn’t,” former Interior Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Anne Castle said last week at the University of Utah’s Wallace Stegner Center annual symposium. “But a part of the reason I say that I wouldn’t suggest a renegotiation is because I don’t think it’s politically possible.”
The already shrinking Lake Powell just got 4% smaller than previously believed. In a study released Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey determined sediments washing into Utah’s largest reservoir reduce its capacity by 33,270 acre-feet each year on average as the sediment settles on the lakebed.
If reservoirs like Lake Powell keep falling, millions of people across the West will have to turn to dirtier and more expensive energy at a time when transitioning to renewable power is of paramount importance for reducing carbon emissions.
Fearing development in Colorado, Nebraska plans to build an interstate canal to lay claim to water from the South Platte River before its neighbor uses it up.
Rio Blanco Water Conservancy District hopes to build an off-channel dam at Wolf Creek and pump river water north to fill it. A nearby landowner and river groups say it’s the wrong idea at the worst time.
For parched areas of the western United States, spring is unlikely to offer relief. Rather, historic drought conditions will probably worsen, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday in its annual spring outlook.
So far, through interviews with Utahns who attended the schools and federal reports, The Salt Lake Tribune has identified eight boarding schools and dormitories that existed in Utah—including three that operate today in the state. The total number of Indigenous boarding schools in Utah over the decades has not previously been clearly identified.
The Interior Department is on the verge of releasing a report on its investigation into the federal government’s past oversight of Native American boarding schools.
National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said Native co-management is fundamental to restoring lands to their healthier, pre-colonial conditions, because tribes have a deep understanding of native plants and animal species. “It’s a symbiotic relationship, and I think it’s important that we figure out how we co-manage those together to ensure those species not just survive, but they actually thrive on the landscape,” Sams said.
The decades-long effort to ensure lasting recognition of Colorado’s Granada War Relocation Center—also known as Camp Amache—finally reached the finish line Friday as President Joe Biden signed legislation making it a national historic site.
The Bureau of Land Management internally released the results of its survey of employees, which found 68 percent think more resources should be focused on climate change issues.6
The Biden administration on Friday said it would resume plans for oil and gas development on federal lands following a court ruling this week that temporarily restored a measure meant to factor the cost of global warming into federal decision-making.
In Wyoming and South Dakota, national forests—ranging from the Bridger-Teton National Forest in western Wyoming to the Black Hills National Forest straddling the Wyoming/South Dakota border—provide a wide variety of benefits to people and wildlife.
The rancher will be reimbursed for the loss of the pregnant cow. Meanwhile, six protective burros were delivered to a nearby ranch that lost three cows to wolves earlier this winter.
Every gun and bullet sold in the U.S. generates excise taxes to support conservation. But Americans are buying guns now for different reasons than in the past—and increasingly, not for hunting.
In 2016, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Washington, along with federal, tribal and university partners, launched an unprecedented search for wolverines. Now with more states on board, the survey is in the middle of its second iteration with the goal of learning more about where this largest member of the weasel family is found and what may have changed in the meantime.
Grizzly bears are being spotted so often in northern Manitoba, a new study concludes they are now “regular residents” of this province, especially along the coast of Hudson Bay.
The Montana Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a ballot initiative to bolster pollution protections along stretches of the Gallatin and Madison rivers can advance. The ruling overturns a determination by the state attorney general.
A $2 million donation by PepsiCo has pushed a consortium led by Trout Unlimited closer to its $27.1 million plan to build a 1-mile channel around the Windy Gap Reservoir, which has blocked fish passage and separated the river since it was built in 1985.
Two Ocean Pass is not only relevant to the dispersal of native Yellowstone cutthroat trout, but also to nonnative fish species, writes guest columnist Annie Carlson.
The convention that produced Montana’s 1972 Constitution is a legendary moment in state history. But as a living document, the Constitution isn’t immune to contemporary debates.
In the Judith Basin, the Myllymaki family has gone all in on regenerative farming techniques aimed at building the health of the soil that sustains them. A national agency born of the Dust Bowl helped them get started, and is now seeding local initiatives to bring a more diverse swath of local knowledge into the conservation conversation.
Nebraska cattlemen plan to build their own butchering plant to bypass America’s meat-processing giants, which they say underpay for livestock even as inflation drives up food prices.
According to the data analysis, there are at least 10 metro areas that could soon become “the next San Francisco” in terms of housing affordability and availability. A few places in California make the list—as do two in Montana.
As state water developers search for more than a half billion dollars for dam and reservoir projects, undertakings that have traditionally advanced with little resistance, they’ve run into a new buzz saw of uncertainty powered by rising costs, shaky construction estimates, a fickle bidding environment and cautious legislators.
The U.S. gets nearly half of its nuclear fuel from Russia and its neighbors. Sens. Barrasso and Lummis want to put that production back in Wyoming’s hands.
Rockies Today is edited by Matthew Frank, fellow in regional journalism at the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.
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