Dolores Water Conservancy District

Colorado’s Division of Water Resources held a meeting in Cortez on Wednesday to seek input from irrigators on the division’s proposed water measurement rules. The rules would mean that farmers in the San Juan and Dolores River basins must begin using measurement methods in order to better record the storage and releases of their water. The Division of Water Resources meeting comes after the Yampa and White basins went through a similar rule-making process to crack down on water users diverting from streams without proper measuring devices. And Congress is considering eliminating federal funding for public media. A House subcommittee recently approved legislation that would zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

A farmer in southwest Colorado is helping administer a federal water conservation program that pays water users in the Upper Basin to curb their use. Greg Vlaming, who’s working to promote the System Conservation Pilot Program to farmers in the Dolores Water Conservancy District area, says those in his region who opt in won’t necessarily be forced to not farm their land in order to save water, and, therefore, earn money from the program. Instead, farmers in the drought-stricken area have a different option: plant crops that need less water in order to conserve, like “forage crops,” which are plants destined to be used as feed for animals.

The System Conservation Pilot Program was recently rebooted with $125 million in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to fight shrinking water levels in Lake Powell.

An above average SNOTEL report shows the state’s southwestern river basins are 139% of average for this time of year.

Water users in southwest Colorado are not opting in to a federal program designed to reduce water consumption. And a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the statehouse are trying to launch a new wildfire detection system for the second year in a row, with the goal of identifying wildfires as early as possible.

Last week’s winter storm brought snowpack levels up to 85% of the seasonal median in the Dolores River Basin and the storm this weekend could bring levels up to 100% of the median. And law enforcement has detected a “particularly deadly” batch of the synthetic opioid Fentanyl circulating in San Miguel county.

Understanding the impacts of drought on everyday life isn't easy. Water access and distribution is complicated, especially in a place like the Four…

John Porter of Cortez, who headed the Dolores Water Conservancy District during the Dolores Project, has died at age 87.

As spring begins in the Four Corners, the Dolores Water Conservancy continues to monitor weather and snowpack in the San Juan Mountains to try to predict…

A few storms have brought some relief from this year’s very dry winter, but water managers say it’s still not easy to predict how much water will be…