On Sunday, the Colorado River passed a grim milestone. Total combined storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell dropped to a historic low. It was my Wilburys colleague Jack Schmidt who noticed the milestone: On Sunday, July 12, the surface of Lake Powell was 3524.32 feet above sea level, and the surface of Lake Mead …
People are finally starting to say the quiet parts, the parts so many Upper Basin people have been grumbling about in private, out loud. Via an incredibly important Heather Sackett story: Colorado Sen. Dylan Roberts, a District 8 Democrat who represents several Western Slope counties, including Eagle, Grand, Garfield, Routt and Summit, asked Colorado’s lead …
Continue reading ‘Cracks in the Upper Colorado River Basin wall’ »
Via Alicia Inez Guzmán at Source New Mexico, we learn that the federal government is no longer paying the cost of monitoring Rio Grande flows at the intake to Santa Fe communities’ Buckman Direct Diversion as part of a joint effort to ensure that contamination from nuclear weapons work at Los Alamos National Laboratory doesn’t …
A grab bag from my friends and colleagues working on Colorado River issues…. The good news From friend of Inkstain Karl Flessa (the guy who helped get me started thinking about the Colorado River Delta), a new analysis concluding that despite the terrible hydrology and political difficulties, environmental restoration work in the delta is working: …
Continue reading ‘Some good Colorado River news, some bad news, and a request for help’ »
I made a brief stop at a dry Rio Grande main channel this morning, around the Central Avenue Bridge, before I pointed the Space Ghost southwest into the South Valley. The Arenal Canal, which hugs the sand hills on the valley’s western edge, was flowing, but just 25 cubic feet per second. 100 cfs is …
Federal water managers yesterday (May 18, 2026) began pushing a pulse of water through New Mexico’s rapidly drying Middle Rio Grande to try to encourage the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow to spawn. From a note sent ’round to the Bureau’s water management list yesterday by Carolyn Donnelly, water operations supervisor for the bureau’s Albuquerque …
Continue reading ‘2026-05-19: Federal managers increase release for the silvery minnow’ »
I was sitting on the front porch early this afternoon with my eyes on the street when the postman come up the front walk holding a book-shaped package. I walked up to him, reached out, and held it in my hands. The kind folks at Bookworks and the Leopold Writing Program, with some help from …