If you look at the last century in New Mexico, stretches of higher temperatures have lengthened; heat waves are hotter and nights, consistently warmer.

Rising heat and expanding aridity harm ecosystems and wildlife and hotter days are dangerous for anyone outside, especially people without housing or access to cool spaces. Extreme heat even interacts with certain medications people need for their physical and mental health. 

It should be no surprise that we’re facing another crackly-dry spring, summer, and fall. Fans watching the March 2 Oscars on Albuquerque TV saw flashing red-flag fire warnings. The next day, high winds and dust storms blasted the state; near Deming, a haboob of fast-moving dust shut down highways.

As of early March, 92 percent of New Mexico was experiencing drought, with almost 30 percent of the state in severe to extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Arizona is in even worse shape: 100 percent of the state is in drought, with 87 percent in severe to exceptional drought. And the interior West’s three-month outlook is for warm, dry conditions — especially in Arizona and New Mexico.

Here in New Mexico, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District—which supplies water for farms—is warning runoff season will be short and river flows, low. The district’s leaders are urging farmers to plan for extended periods between irrigation deliveries and say that without summertime monsoons, they will not meet everyone’s needs this year.

During the 1900s—including during the infamous 1950s drought and earlier in this century—armers could often still expect full water allocations in a dry year.

Now, when farmers don’t receive water—and the Rio Grande dries for long stretches—it’s not only because there isn’t enough snow melting off the mountains.  It’s also because consistently dry soils suck up any moisture, making both forests and croplands thirstier.

Not only that, but decades of persistent drought and warming temperatures have desiccated reservoirs along the Rio Grande and its tributary, the Chama River.

On the Chama River, Heron Reservoir is 14 percent full; its neighbors, El Vado and Abiquiu, are at 14 percent and 51 percent respectively. Further down the watershed, on the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, Elephant Butte Reservoir is only 13 percent full, and its neighbor, Caballo, nine percent full. 

In New Mexico, some water users, including the irrigation district, rely on water piped from the Colorado River watershed into the Chama and then the Rio Grande. This year, most of that supplemental water won’t be there.

The view upstream on both watersheds is also troubling, especially in Arizona, New Mexico and southern Utah where the snowpack is “below to well-below median.” Last month, the Colorado River’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, were 34 percent full, the lowest they’d been in early February for the last 30 years of records.

I’m alarmed by many things happening right now, including the disappearance of climate data from federal websites and the gutting of federal workforces and budgets. We need wildland firefighters, scientists, and the staffers who kept our parks and public lands functioning.

But as a reporter who has covered climate change and its impacts in my state for more than two decades, I take the long view along with a local view.

We have known for decades that the planet is steadily warming and that the impacts of climate change would intensify. And we must resist focusing solely on the current chaos of the federal government.

There’s never been a better time to become immersed in local politics or organizing, and to hold state and local leaders accountable for action on climate.

We can collaborate on local solutions and work together to better deal with the crises we face. Really, we have no choice.

Laura Paskus is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about Western issues She is longtime reporter based in Albuquerque and the author of At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate and Water Bodies.

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But surprisingly, BuRec’s August 16 press release imposed no new cuts on states, instead affirming cuts mandated under 2007 and 2019 agreements. Nevada and Mexico took minor losses and Arizona emerged as the first big loser.

BuRec said Arizona must cut 592,000 acre-feet “because of the concession it made back in 1968 to California to get the Central Arizona Project online,” says University of Wyoming law professor Jason Robison. That concession meant the 1.4 million acre-feet capacity of the Central Arizona Project has junior water rights. In a shortage — like now — the Central Arizona Project, except for tribal water rights, could be cut to zero, a blow to cities and agriculture.

Here’s a question the Upper Basin states seem inclined to ask: If the 1922 Colorado River Compact parceling out the river’s water is the law, shouldn’t California face major cuts? After all, California’s huge allotment of 4.4 million acre-feet lately equals the entire consumption of the four Upper Basin states, and its allotment is also junior to almost 1 million acre-feet of tribal water.

Thanks to a 1931 seven-party agreement, California established a pecking order of priority for each of its water users. Massive districts such as Palo Verde and the Imperial Valley have priority over the Metropolitan Water District, which brings drinking water to 19 million people in Los Angeles and Southern California. The state has a structure, but no plan for serious savings.

For the Upper Basin states, says University of Wyoming Law professor Jason Robison, “It’s more nuanced. But there’s significant federal authority to run those (BuRec) Upper Basin reservoirs,” though none are very large.

Where might other water cuts be found? Colorado’s 1876 constitution ranked municipal water over agriculture, making it tough to dry up cities like Colorado Springs or Aurora, even though their water rights are junior. But residents might see incentives for tearing out lawns, along with programs for water reuse and much higher water rates.

In rural Colorado, there isn’t much water available to conserve. The largest irrigation district in the Upper Basin, the 500,000 acre-feet Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association, already took a150,000 acre-feet cut this year because of a light snowpack.

“The runoff just isn’t there,” says General Manager Steve Pope.

Pope, as well as many others in agriculture, views a desert city like Phoenix — which grew on the false promises of reliable water — as an existential threat to farming communities.

“Are we going to water a field that produces some sort of a crop, or do we water a golf course or a median?” asks Pope. “What’s the benefit of a lawn?”

What the federal government can’t touch for now is any Upper Basin irrigation project created before the signing of the Colorado River Compact in 1922. In Colorado, a spreadsheet compiled by the state’s Division of Water Resources tells what projects, by date, risk losing water. Some Western slope irrigators are vulnerable because the water rights they’re using were bought by municipalities only recently, intending them for future growth.

Many Colorado irrigators on private ditches are lucky to have so-called “perfected” rights dating from the late 1800s. To snag water from these irrigators, it’s likely to be all carrot and no stick. But rather than taking payments for not irrigating, says Pope, “we would be more concerned with system efficiency and improvements.”

The Inflation Reduction Act provides $4 billion to Colorado River water users for just this kind of conservation. Meanwhile, Colorado is the only Upper Basin state that seriously tested paying irrigators to fallow their land or reduce irrigation by half. But ceasing to irrigate farms involves risks. After a couple of dry years hay fields can bounce back, landowners report, but anything more than that leaves bare dirt and dust in the air.

For now, BuRec seems to be following its plans and hoping for the best, which means emergency cuts might be drastic. As John Weisheit of Utah-based Living Rivers sees it, BuRec made a mistake when it told the seven Basin states of the Colorado River to find 2 to 4 million acre-feet to do without.

“The cuts,” he says, “should go even deeper, up to 6 million acre-feet. The need is to that point.”

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.

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The conflict is focused on nearly 1,000 acres of rural and wildland in Sonoma Valley. The prime wine-country property has been eyed for development since long before 2018, when the state transitioned its last clients from the Sonoma Developmental Center, California’s oldest hospital for the “feeble-minded.”    

What remains on the land are decaying historic buildings, an active fire department, a popular network of footpaths through oak and redwood forests, and the valley’s only two municipal drinking-water reservoirs.   

Now the state, working with Sonoma County’s planning staff, proposes to transform the former Center into a “vibrant, mixed-use community.” Its retail shops, offices, and some 900 new housing units would augment the valley’s wineries, tourism, manufacturing, and small businesses.

 But in a time and place of growing aridity, the proposal reads like a pipe dream.   

“Unfortunately, the state didn’t consider land and water constraints before making its plan,” says historical ecologist Arthur Dawson, who chairs an advisory board for North Sonoma Valley.    

Water, especially, is in short supply. The valley’s 44,000-acre groundwater basin and recycled water provide only half of the community’s water. Piped-in supplies make up the other half, shipped from increasingly drought-stressed river basins farther north.   

Lack of water availability, though, isn’t considered a deal-breaker. Susan Gorin, one of the county’s supervisors, has said that the Center grounds “can meet the needs for our community: affordable housing, living-wage jobs and certainly the preservation of open space,” while also “making sense financially.” In other words, while generating state revenue.   

It’s no secret that Sonoma Valley and its 50,000 residents are water insecure. As part of research teams monitoring local surface and groundwater beginning in 2000, I witnessed the decline of once-healthy streams and aquifers up close. The bottom line: Once-abundant water wealth has been depleted by a population growing at 5 percent annually and an agricultural economy invested 70 percent in irrigated wine grapes.   

Many plan proponents believe that the development’s new homes and businesses can draw on the old Center’s two reservoirs and aging water system. Opponents see those as already necessary for emergency drinking water and firefighting.   

Underlying the debate is Sonoma Valley’s status as a high-priority basin under California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. “The Act requires groundwater resources to be managed to avoid undesirable results,” says Sandi Potter, retired Sonoma County water-resource planner. Those results are already evident in the valley’s declining groundwater levels, drying streams, and seawater intrusion into aquifers.   

According to Potter, the law means “development can no longer go on unbridled without regard to a watershed’s actual capacity.” Sonoma Valley’s management plan under the Act is rock solid, but it has yet to be tested on new development.   

Meanwhile, valley residents visit the old Center lands every day to hike, cycle, and ride horseback. Many helped “vision” the Center’s repurposing before the closure, attended two years of project meetings and submitted comments on its Environmental Impact Study.   

The nonprofit Sonoma Land Trust, long involved in protecting the area’s wildlife habitat, has said that the plan’s lack of specificity could lead to a focus on single-family, market-rate homes. That would not help to meet state goals for affordable, multi-unit housing.   

Meanwhile, the valley’s workforce has been increasingly shut out of Sonoma’s real-estate market. Median home prices are approaching a million dollars and “many of the vacancies that exist are devoted to second or vacation homes,” according to the county’s Economic Development Board.   

In response, Dawson started a petition to the Board of Supervisors proposing a project that would be half as dense and less tailored to the valley’s overwhelming influx of wealth. He gathered 1,500 signatures quickly: “Everyone is saying no.”   

But no to development has rarely meant “no” when it comes to California’s Cadillac Desert landscapes. In a valley once rich with marshes, streams, and forests, a community now living on drained, fire-prone land needs to stop drawing on water from rivers and watersheds miles away.

For now, though, all we can do now is keep pushing for development decisions that make sense.   

Becca Lawton is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She is a retired fluvial geologist and Grand Canyon River guide living in California. beccalawton.com.

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One outcome they pinpointed was the impact of heat and drought on water flows in the Colorado River. For the last 20 years this new climate, combined with booming human population growth, has parched landscapes, drained reservoirs and incited talk of water wars across the region. Lake Powell on the Colorado River, and Glen Canyon Dam which creates the reservoir, have become casualties of this strained environment.

Lake Powell is the second largest reservoir in the United States, but in the last year alone its water level  has dropped 52 feet and the reservoir now sits at 31.4% full.

If you’re a pessimist, that’s over 68% empty. Water managers are already imposing cuts in water deliveries in some states; all their choices are filled with political pitfalls.

A further complication is that the federal government operates a hydroelectric plant at Glen Canyon Dam that provides cheap electricity to parts of the Southwest. The day is coming when the hydroelectric turbines will stop for want of water to spin them.

To save the lake and generate electricity, the government needs water. But where will that water come from?

Upstream of Lake Powell, in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico are millions of acres of irrigated farms and ranches that suck massive amounts of water out of the Colorado River before it reaches Lake Powell. If those farms and ranches quit taking water and instead ran that water downstream, the lake and its electricity could be saved. To ensure that outcome, the federal government has hatched a plan it calls “demand management,” which proposes to buy or lease massive amounts of farm and ranch water to prop up Lake Powell.

On the one hand, the farmers and ranchers would get paid for the water, and likely paid very well. If I were a rancher who owned water, I’d sit comfortably until the offering price for my water made me even more comfortable.

On the other hand, lots of people and businesses believe that irrigated farming, ranching and outdoor recreation are not only central to the region’s economy, but also to its culture. Should that economy — and the soul of the Southwest — be sacrificed to save a manmade reservoir and its hydroelectricity?

I’m torn by this dilemma. If farms and ranches are dried up, more water flows down the river. More water in the river benefits fish and the environment. But there’s another solution: We can save farms and ranches and instead drain Lake Powell, freeing the Colorado River to flow free through 169 miles of a drowned and beautiful place called Glen Canyon.

There’s always the “save hydroelectricity” argument, but it’s a red herring. There are other ways to generate electricity, including wind and solar. In fact, if you’ve ever stood near Glen Canyon Dam and its hydropower plant, you can’t help noticing that it’s surrounded by millions of acres of dry, sun-drenched landscape that would make a great place for a solar electricity farm.

Electricity can be replaced; farms and ranches cannot.

As we grapple with these tradeoffs, it’s important to remember that even lower water flows are projected for the future, plus more severe heat and drought that will become the “new normal” for the Colorado River and the entire region. Lake Oroville, California’s second largest reservoir, now has inactive hydro turbines because there’s not enough water to turn them, its dusty lakebed a harbinger of what’s to come for Lake Powell.

Let’s also remember that Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1963 and it and Lake Powell are only 58 years old. The region lived without them before, and it can live without them again. Now, nature is forcing our hand, telling us that it’s time to breach the dam and let the Colorado River run free.

Gary Wockner is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a river-protection activist based in Colorado and runs the nonprofit Save the Colorado.

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This summer, a different silence gripped the Basin.  A dead silence.  The 90,000 acres of marshes and open water that make up the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges are a small remnant of vast wetlands that once filled this region on the Oregon-California border.  

With over 75% of those wetlands now converted to agriculture, the refuges are a last precious oasis for nesting waterfowl and other marsh birds.  For this oasis to burst with life, it simply needs water.  Sadly, nothing is simple about water in the Klamath Basin.  And this summer, that led to tragedy.

All the water in the Klamath Basin is promised to somebody — and almost every year, far more is promised than is available. The “protected” wetlands of the national wildlife refuges come last on the list, and are chronically starved of water.  In 2020, the situation was so critical that Bureau of Reclamation, which controls the water, released three emergency allocations to the refuges, totaling 14,000 acre-feet. It was not enough, and compared to the 147,000 acre-feet received by irrigators, barely a drop in the bucket.

The resulting stagnant pools were perfect breeding grounds for bacteria that produce a botulism toxin deadly to birds (but harmless to humans).  The toxin is taken up by aquatic invertebrates that filter-feed on the bacteria, and then reaches fatal concentrations in waterfowl and other birds that eat the invertebrates   Afflicted birds lose muscle control. Unable to hold up their heads, poisoned ducks often drown in the water that should have given them life.  

The Klamath refuges regularly suffer outbreaks of avian botulism in late summer, when the water is lowest.  In a “normal” year, a few hundred birds might be brought in for treatment.

This summer, the outbreak was a conflagration.  More than 3,000 poisoned birds were treated by the rehabilitation organization Bird Ally X.   They were the lucky ones.  Among rescued birds that survived the first 24 hours, over 80% could be released, a testimony to the tireless work of volunteers, the support of conservation organizations, and the expertise of Bird Ally X staff.

But most poisoned birds never made it to treatment.  Field surveyors at the refuge gathered the bodies of about 20,000 dead birds, a number equivalent to the population of Klamath Falls, the region’s largest city.  The California Waterfowl Association estimates that at least three times that many died.  So — at least 60,000 dead birds. Dead Mallards, with their emerald-green heads. Dead Northern Shovelers, with their comically enormous bills.  Dead Northern Pintails, long-necked, long-tailed, and elegant. 

A host of seemingly legitimate claims on the Klamath Basin’s water exist:  farmers whose roots in the region go back generations, tribes whose ties to endangered Klamath River salmon and Klamath Lake suckers stretch to time immemorial. 

 But older than any human claim, any human “right,” are the rights of the wild.  How easily we forget that water is wild.  We claim it, we fight over it, but we did not make it.  The water of the Klamath Basin created a world of overflowing abundance, of lakes filled with suckers, a great river bursting with salmon, and also of marshlands filled with ducks and grebes and ibis and egrets.  Our use, our heedless overuse, has almost destroyed that world. 

There are glimmers of hope.  The dams that choke the Klamath River may be finally nearing removal, to the great benefit of salmon.  Over $6 million was recently made available to the wildlife refuges to lease additional water.  But the comprehensive plan needed to assure a supply of water sufficient to prevent a recurrence of 2020’s botulism tragedy remains elusive.

In my mind’s eye, I see the 60,000 dead birds gathered in a great poisoned pile, a pyramid of lost lives.  The bodies are perfect and unmarked.  The feathers are still beautiful.  If the masters of the Klamath Basin’s water, all the contending parties, could be brought to stand before that awful sight, would they, I wonder, fall silent for a moment?  Would their dusty hearts soften?  Can we, at least, agree that this must never happen again? 

The post When Water Dries Up, It Can Be Deadly appeared first on Writers On The Range.

 Wildfires across the West had consumed the labor of all available wildland firefighters, and though there were fewer fires burning, those fires were larger and more difficult to contain. They consumed 13 million acres — an area almost the size of West Virginia.

 In the midst of the 2020 wildfire season, John Phipps, the Forest Service’s deputy chief, told Congress that this “was an extraordinary year and it broke the system. The system was not designed to handle this.”

 Draining the national wildland firefighting pool was why my fire crew and I had to work longer and harder than usual on the Idaho-Oregon border. We were fighting the Woodhead fire, which had peaked at 85,000 acres and threatened to burn the developed areas around the towns of Cambridge and Council, Idaho.

 With only three crews to try to contain a fire that required probably ten crews, it meant day and night shifts for 14 days. Each crew found itself with miles of fire line to construct and hold. With not enough person-power, we were always trying to do more with less, and it was no comfort to know that what we faced was not unique.

 Across the nation, the large fires meant working in hazardous conditions that called for far more workers than were available. For those of us on the line, it came down to little sleep and a heavy workload, combined with insufficient calories and emotional and physical exhaustion.

 Fighting wildfires week after week takes a toll on the body. Smoke contains carcinogens, and firefighters spend days exerting themselves immersed in air thick with ash. We all figure that the long-term health effects cannot be good.

 One of my co-workers confessed that he goes to sleep “with pain in my knees and hands,” and added, “I wake up with pain in my lungs and head.” Over a six-to-eight month fire season, minor injuries can become chronic pain.

 Wildland firefighters are also vulnerable to suicide due to job-related stress and the lack of resources outside of the fire season.  Long assignments put a strain on firefighters’ families and can damage relationships. A 2018 psychological study, conducted by Florida State University, reported that 55% of wildland firefighters experienced “clinically significant suicidal symptoms,” compared to 32% for structural firefighters.

 Wildland firefighters who work for federal agencies, such as the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, are classified as “Range” Technicians” or “Forestry Technicians” —  a title more suitable for golf course workers than people wearing heavy packs and working a fire line.

 Calling them “technicians” negates the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to work with wildfire. Most firefighters sign contracts as seasonal “1039s,” agreeing to work 1,039 base hours for $12-$16 an hour. This is one hour short of being defined as a temporary worker who is eligible for benefits such as retirement and year-round health care.

 Overtime work is what allows “technicians” to pay the bills, but once they reach 1,039 base hours some firefighters are laid off even while the fire season continues and their regions continue to burn.

 There is a remedy in sight: the Wildland Firefighter Recognition Act, which formally identifies wildland firefighters as exactly that, tossing out the technician term and recognizing the “unusual physical hardship of the position.”

 Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines introduced the bill last year, and recently, California Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa introduced the bill in the House. Co-sponsored by California Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, the bill currently sits with the House Oversight and Reform Committee. This is a nonpartisan bill that deserves support from every Westerner.

 We all know fires will continue to burn throughout the West, but right now many of the men and women who fight those fires on our behalf are suffering from burnout. Addressing wildfires as a national priority starts with recognition of the profession fighting them.

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