Meanwhile, in California, some fire insurers have lost so much money they’ve pulled out of the state. Overall, fire insurance is becoming as expensive and unpredictable as the natural disasters—not just wildfires but also hail and windstorms—that are driving up rate increases. In some places, increases are as much as 1,000% for houses and condos nestled close to trees.

In Colorado, Tiffany Lockwood said she was dropped twice by fire insurance carriers over the 10 years she’s lived in Evergreen, a heavily forested exurb of Denver.

A former Florida resident, Lockwood, 59, only has one way out in case of a wildfire—and even then she’ll have little warning. “When I lived in Florida,” she said, “we knew four days ahead when a hurricane was coming. Here we get 40 minutes.”

Lockwood thinks insurance companies are running scared and giving impossible directives. One insurer asked her to remove all the shrubs and trees within 30 feet of the house. But the plan meant taking down a lot of her neighbor’s trees, too.

Evergreen’s attraction is that residents live amidst towering conifer trees. But red zones on fire maps are being expanded all over Colorado after several recent large forest fires and the wind-driven Marshall grassfire outside of Boulder, in December 2021. It destroyed more than 1,000 suburban homes and was the state’s most expensive fire yet. Formerly “safe” places are now described as at-risk.

Jeff Geslin lives in high and dry La Plata County, in southwestern Colorado, surrounded by 35 acres of piñon and juniper trees. He and his wife Lorna are used to remediation plans, he said, and when their insurance increases, “I just pay it, no questions asked.”

But they were shocked when their condo association in Summit County, governing their second home, lost its insurance policy.

“It might be because we’re close to Forest Service land,” Geslin said, “which must be more risk.” Geslin was assessed $6,772 extra for the new policy the Homeowners Association managed to find—an increase of 1,000%.

Colorado State Senator Dylan Roberts is working on legislation to insure larger structures. “I’ve gotten calls about insurance for the last year if not two years,” he said. “The single-family upset has quieted down, but the big thing I hear about is HOA and condo buildings.”

The state already has what is called the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan in place for smaller buildings when insurance companies refuse to underwrite traditional coverage. It’s backed by private insurers and administered by an appointed board of insurance professionals.

“We hope to insure no one,” said FAIR Plan board member Carole Walker. She’s the executive director of an insurance trade group covering, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

“This is insurance of last resort,” she said, “as we don’t want to compete with private insurers. They’re  struggling after 10 straight years of unprofitability in property insurance.”

The FAIR Plan board, which plans to sell policies late next year, hired industry veteran Kelly Campbell as executive director this May. It will offer bare-bones coverage with high deductibles and low maximum amounts. The plan would offer coverage of $5 million per commercial structure and $750,000 per house.

“Everything has escalated,” said Walker. “Colorado is in that perfect storm of catastrophes. The number of claims and the cost to pay those claims is at a record pace. Add in the escalating number of events like hail and wildfire, and it’s the hardest insurance market in a generation.”

Walker says Colorado established a resiliency code board via state law in 2023, with a mandate of hardening structures with fire-resistant siding, metal roofs and landscaping. “We need confidence back in the marketplace,” she said about the board. “Ultimately, this is a life-safety issue because wildfire knows no boundaries. You’re dependent on your neighbor.”

Kevin Parks, a State Farm insurer in Western Colorado, has some advice for Western homeowners: “Widen your driveway and road to 20 feet, install a turnaround big enough for fire vehicles, remove shrubs and trees close to your house, and add a perimeter of gravel all around your structure. Finally, hope you live where two roads lead to your house.”

In this new age of longer and meaner fire seasons, Parks added, “The fire is coming—now it’s a question of being ready.”

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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But there’s a problem: The river carries a hefty 55% of the sediment entering the reservoir, and that mud is piling up.

The sediment-heavy river flows south into New Mexico before jogging into Utah, then it joins the Colorado River close to the Arizona border. The confluence is submerged under Lake Powell.

After decades of drought, the reservoir created by Glen Canyon Dam has dwindled to just a third full. Now, as the San Juan River flows toward Lake Powell, it rambles over a huge pancake of mud that’s 49 miles long, a mile wide in some places, and as much as 120 feet deep in the final reaches of the San Juan River.

Unique hydrology has contributed to this plug, A relatively wide canyon and multiple waterfalls slow down the river, allowing sediment to drop out. Though the San Juan is the muddiest tributary, all the Colorado’s tributaries drop a good deal of mud 100 miles or more upstream of Glen Canyon Dam.

It’s a Western phenomenon caused by damming swift rivers, said Jeff Geslin, a geologist at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. The result is that reservoirs in the West have become “temporary sediment storage facilities.”

If that mud could move through the Grand Canyon, like it did before the dam, biologists say that would help restore the canyon’s ecosystem, which depends on sediment-laden flushes in spring to scour riverbanks. Then, as the river slows, beaches form and vegetation returns.

Gary Gianniny, professor of Geosciences at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado has been studying the San Juan River, along with river researchers who call their team, “The Returning Rapids Project.”

The group’s big worry is that without drastic action—draining Lake Powell to let the Colorado River run free—time may be running out for the languorous San Juan River.

Mike DeHoff, principal investigator of the Returning Rapids Project said the sediment layer on the San Juan has created new channels and new waterfalls. DeHoff added that no one knows whether the river’s sediment plug would dissipate even if Glen Canyon Dam were breached.

Researchers boating the San Juan River where it approaches Lake Powell say they’re forced to navigate an ever-moving pile of sediment that also involves portaging around rock waterfalls. When they finally arrive at Lake Powell, there’s dangerous liquefied clay and sand to navigate.

“I’ve seen people sink to their chests in the mud, saved only by their flotation devices and nearby boaters,” said DeHoff of Moab, Utah.

“We’ll need a drone to study that area,” added Gianniny.

Researchers with the Returning Rapids Project talk a lot about what to call these giant slabs of calving sediment. DeHoff suggests “mud bergs.”  

Semi-solid mud walls along the river have already been dubbed “the Dominy Formation,” named after the avid federal dam-builder Floyd Dominy.

“Technically, Gianniny said, the giant mud plug is a “mass of uncompacted mud and sand that causes alluvial fanning.” And falling slabs of sediment, those “mud bergs,” act as semi-permanent river features.

BLM River Ranger Chad Niehaus uses a packraft to regularly visit what researchers are calling the Lowest San Juan. He floats over 30-plus miles of the muddy river, finishing with a four-mile backpack out to a four-wheel drive vehicle 48 miles from Page, Arizona as the crow flies.

Niehaus marvels at the deserted region. “Sediment is moving around, and you must be vigilant in a different way than you do on a ‘normal’ river.”

Drought, climate change, “whatever you call it, the Lowest San Juan has re-emerged,” Niehaus said about wildlife in the once-submerged canyon. “I’ve seen river otters, mountain lions, coyotes—even pelicans—but the most astounding aspect is how quickly nature is coming back.” In places, cottonwood trees are 20 feet high, he said.

“When I was a teenager there were places on maps that were considered forever gone,” he said, pointing to sections on the map entitled, “Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.”

Now, he said, “some forever-gone places are revealed.” He mentions Cathedral in the Desert, a wondrous site on the nearby Escalante River. Enough water has receded to make it visible, though some of this sacred place for Indigenous people is buried under 30-plus feet of sediment.

Meanwhile, the muddy end of the San Juan River is wild again: “I rarely see a footprint.”

Dave Marston is the publisher of the independent nonprofit, Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

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