Scott Franz
Scott Franz is a government watchdog reporter and photographer from Steamboat Springs. He spent the last seven years covering politics and government for the Steamboat Pilot & Today, a daily newspaper in northwest Colorado. His reporting in Steamboat stopped a police station from being built in a city park, saved a historic barn from being destroyed and helped a small town pastor quickly find a kidney donor. His favorite workday in Steamboat was Tuesday, when he could spend many of his mornings skiing untracked powder and his evenings covering city council meetings. Scott received his journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is an outdoorsman who spends at least 20 nights a year in a tent. He spoke his first word, 'outside', as a toddler in Edmonds, Washington. Scott visits the Great Sand Dunes, his favorite Colorado backpacking destination, twice a year. Scott's reporting is part of Capitol Coverage, a collaborative public policy reporting project, providing news and analysis to communities across Colorado for more than a decade. Fifteen public radio stations participate in Capitol Coverage from throughout Colorado.
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Water users around the west seek billions in federal drought help as Colorado River forecast worsensIt's not clear yet how the money would be distributed among several states in a river basin where political fights and an impasse over how to share water long term have persisted even during historic drought. -
A federal hydrologist appeared to be momentarily at a loss for words Thursday as he described how dire the latest forecast has gotten for how much water will flow through the Colorado River Basin this summer. -
Widespread drought and fears of a power crisis is forcing the Interior Department to start sending billions of gallons of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir downstream to prop up Lake Powell. -
Invasive species are on the march in the Colorado River, threatening everything from endangered native fish in Arizona to Colorado's juicy Palisade peaches. -
Estevan López, New Mexico's water negotiator, said talks resumed March 2, and the upper and lower basin states are using a short-term pitch from Nevada as a starting point. -
The sluggish Colorado River negotiations have entered a new phase: Long and fiery letter writing. -
Colorado's state climatologist said long-range forecasts are also not signaling a 'Miracle March.' -
Leaders of environmental groups are issuing fresh warnings this week about the impacts the ongoing gridlock could have in the river basin. -
The Fetcher ranch in northwest Colorado is on the frontlines this year of record-low snowpack across the West. It's adding a sense of urgency among seven states to finalize a plan for how to conserve the dwindling Colorado River. -
Parks and Wildlife also has plans to install a new $1.3 million dip tank to improve the decontamination of boats visiting the Highline Lake, a large reservoir near Grand Junction where mussels were detected in 2022.
