Water & Drought

Local officials and watershed groups say wildfire preparedness in southwest Colorado includes emergency alerts, evacuation planning, defensible space, forest health and post-fire watershed risks.

Water negotiators, river enthusiasts, Native tribes and lots of lawyers convened at the University of Colorado Law School on Thursday to take stock of the future of the dwindling Colorado River.

Republican Jeff Hurd and Democrats Alex Kelloff and Dwayne Romero weigh in on some of the big environmental issues in Western and Southern Colorado.

Bob Bragg’s Farm News & Views Report looks at how drought, high input costs, low commodity prices and rising financial pressure are affecting farmers and ranchers in the Four Corners and across the U.S.

The Colorado River Wildfire Collaborative hired a program manager to raise funds for mitigation work between Glenwood Springs and De Beque. That region is one of the most fire-prone in the state, and has lacked the resources to address the risk.

The Montezuma County commissioners have reinstated a fire ban in the unincorporated areas of the county. Also on Tuesday, they approved a contract for up to $15,000 with USDA Wildlife Services.

The Dolores Watersheds Collaborative is developing a Wildfire Ready Action Plan to identify post-fire flooding, erosion and sedimentation risks in the upper Dolores River watershed.

A special mid-year West Slope Water Summit brought together water managers and community leaders to address a dire water year. Projected inflows into Lake Powell are expected to be well below half of normal — and negotiations over the river's future remain unresolved.

It'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 rainstorm in the first two days of April produced enough moisture to push the month’s total precipitation to 179 percent of the historic average for Cortez. However, that didn’t really change the dramatically dry picture overall in the area.