The Colorado River begins in the Rocky Mountain snowpack, which provides the water that starts off the river on its epic journey. But as the American West gets hotter, the snowpack at the start keeps getting smaller and smaller.
The Colorado River begins in the Rocky Mountain snowpack, which provides the water that starts off the river on its epic journey. But as the American West gets hotter, that snowpack keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Today, the second in our six-part special on the future of this vital waterway. New episodes will publish every Friday through Feb. 10. Follow the project here. Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times water reporter Ian James and L.A. Times video journalist Albert Lee
More reading:
Our full Colorado River series
Listen to the first episode in this series, “Colorado River in Crisis, Pt. 1: A Dying River”
Video: The Colorado River is drying up. Climate change and drought have taken a major toll.
Waterfall: The transition that has taken place in the Colorado river basin is astounding.
Waterfall: the Colorado river basin is in its 23rd year of a historic drought.
Waterfall: This is where it starts
Waterfall: Water that falls in Colorado is not just Colorado's water
Waterfall: so if there is no water, there is no water
Waterfall: The snowpack was near to slightly below normal.
Waterfall: And the compact that was signed a hundred years ago is based on a climate that no longer exists.
Gustavo Arellano: The Colorado River is the sixth longest in the United States. It runs over 1400 miles through seven states and serves as a water source for millions of people across the American Southwest.
But the river brings a lot less water than it once did and its reservoirs are drying up. In episode one of our special series on this vital waterway, we gave an overview of its problems. Today we'll go straight to the start of the river.
I'm Gustavo Arellano. You're listening to the Times Essential News from the LA Times. It’s Friday, January 13, 2023. Today we go to the snowpack of Rocky Mountain National Park, birthplace of the Colorado River.
In our previous episode, we learned that The 1922 Colorado River Compact divided the river's water evenly between the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming….
and the lower basin states. Nevada, California, and Arizona.
But the Upper Basin States are seeing much less snow, which could spell disaster for everyone else.
My Times colleagues, water reporter Ian James and videojournalist Albert Lee, have traveled to the River's Headwaters to understand what’s happening. Ian, Albert, welcome to the Times.
Ian James: Thanks for having us.
Albert Lee: Good to be here.
Gustavo Arellano: Ian, you've been to the source of where the Colorado River starts. How does it look like? Where is it? What's there?
Ian James: Well, the headwaters of the Colorado River in Colorado is beautiful. It's in Rocky Mountain National Park, spreads out across this alpine valley. There are mountains in the background, pine forests, and in the meadow, the river just winds through. It's not that wide there, and it takes in all the melting snow.
It's pretty beautiful landscape. Of course, this is the main stem of the Colorado River. There also are other large tributaries join the Colorado. They include the green, the Yampa, the Gunnison, the San Juan and other rivers all along the way,
Gustavo Arellano: Can the weather get crazy up there.
Albert Lee: It was pretty interesting um, as a snowboarder to be going there in the middle of spring to see that much snow.
I was beginning to see like, yeah, this is how this much snow melts to provide that much water. Just the scale of it was so immense to me. And we're driving through the Berthoud Pass at around 11,000 foot elevation it feels like a balmy 70 degrees as we drive up into the divide. We're just seeing all kinds of snow drifts.
Hail. Freezing weather. So it's just show me how alive the mountain was. It's kind of astounding.
Gustavo Arellano:You spent some time up there with Colorado scientists who surveyed the snow and the upper basin for the federal government. What are they doing over there?
Albert Lee: They're forecasting how much water the Rockies will spill down into the lower states.
Brian Domonkos: 18….so we're headed right for that endpoint there.
Albert Lee: Brian Domonkos is a hydrologist for the U S D A.
Gustavo Arellano: That's the US Department of Agriculture.
Albert Lee: and what they're doing is they're literally just measuring the snowfall.
Albert Lee:So we actually snow showed into a snow survey site about 11,000 feet up, and it was this old school process that was 80 years old.
Brian Domonkos: Right now what's gonna happen is, take the tubes up, put it into the snow. It's the actual depth of core. We wanna make sure that we're getting the entire snow pack. So we want to make sure that we go all the way down to the ground.
Albert Lee: Every few yards actually, they would measure these site.
Brian Domonkos: 20, 25.8. It's kind of low.
Usually this time of year. It should be in the thirties, but I think with the shallow snow, the density winds up just being lower cuz you don't have so much snow Compacting
Albert Lee: itself, these were a few of 250 sites he would survey throughout the season.
Brian Domonkos: On an average year, between 50 and 80% of the water that we use in the Western US comes from mountain snow melt. Now exactly how much it will be in any given year. That varies.
Gustavo Arellano:The recent winter storms in the west have been pretty heavy, and they’ve added more snow to the snowpack from California to Colorado, but what did the team tell you about last year’s snowpack?
Albert Lee: In a few different spots, it was measuring 28 to 30 inches, and what that equated to was pretty much close to average Snowfall. But what Brian was saying was that just because we have close to normal snowfall does not mean that we're gonna have close to normal runoff or close to normal snow melt that would actually make it into the water system.
Brian Domonkos: Unfortunately,it's not where we needed it to be in order to make up for some of the deficits that we've seen. You know, over the last decade plus, you know, we are certainly in a drought, and to overcome that drought, we are going to need snowpack and precipitation to be above to well above normal on a regular basis, not just one year.
Ian James: The watershed has gotten warmer and has been drying out. Even when we get a near-average snowpack year, it’s often translating into below-average runoff, and It's partly because the average temperatures have risen about three degrees since 1970 with climate change,
Becky Bolinger: Areas where rivers get their start. Those highest elevations are particularly sensitive to a warming climate.
Ian James: I spoke with Becky Bolinger, she's the assistant state climatologist with the Colorado Climate Center.
Becky Bolinger: So we still get snow, which is great, and it still gets cold, but what we're seeing is that it's just harder for that snow to go as far as it used to.
Ian James: With higher temperatures, it’s making the snow melt earlier in the spring. And higher temperatures are also drying out the landscape. The soils are drier.
Becky Bolinger: So as the snowpack starts to fall, and the ground freezes, you are now locking into place those dry soils. And once the soils thaw
Ian James: that first runoff soaks into the parched soil – like a sponge.
Becky Bolinger: and so that's the first bucket needs to be filled. So when the snow pack starts to melt, instead of running off, it's going to fill that bucket.
Ian James: All this leads to less water flowing in the river.
Gustavo Arellano: After the break, the livelihoods affected by a lowering river, and what one rancher is doing about it.
Gustavo Arellano: So Albert, last year you visited some folks who live right below the snowpack. How are the changes in climate conditions affecting them?
Albert Lee: We met, we met a number of ranchers and retired cattle ranchers. These are people that lived off a high flowing river and as demand has increased on the Colorado River,
They've seen the water levels drop. So what's happening is their pumps that were formally able to pump water to their fields are not able to pump water.
Doug: I'll drive you guys over, the river's just right there. But thi-this is an old channel of the Colorado tight here.
Albert Lee: We met Doug Bruchez, who's a fifth generation cattle rancher.
Albert Lee: He took us out to see the newborn Spring baby cows.
Doug: We started calving on the 15th of March, so
Doug: If they're tagged, they're older. If they're not tagged, that means that they were born either last night or this morning.
Albert Lee: It was amazing. It was literally seeing the calves frolicking and jumping around jocking for a position to get their feed, get their hay. We were out there in what was supposed to be the middle of muddy season.
This is when the waters from the river would overflow. Into their fields and we would normally be walking through mud, But because of low water levels, we were literally walking through hard ground.
Ian James: Ranchers in that area have explained that they saw flooding in the 1980s where the floodwaters just spread out across the valley and covered the whole area, and even some of the cows would be marooned on like little islands in the middle of all that water. But starting in the early two thousands, they saw the water drop so low that then they had to start readjusting their pumps.
Albert Lee: It was astounding. Doug Bruchez was talking about at the peak, the Colorado River flowed at 6,000 cubic feet per second.
I think that's something like 6,000 basketballs of water. If you were to think about that as volume
Gustavo Arellano: basketballs, wow
Albert Lee: Flowing down the river per second. And now they were talking about measuring flows of 150 cubic feet per second. What a difference. 6,000 cubic feet per second to 150 cubic feet per second, and it's creating this ecological problem on top of making their lives harder just to cattle ranch, just to irrigate their hay fields, just to kind of maintain their way of living.
Doug: We've cut our cattle numbers. We were running 600 head of cows in 2016, and every year we have been dropping our cattle numbers by 25 head.
Albert Lee: Now, They're having to raise the water level of the river. They're trying to work with engineers to truck in boulders, literally into the river to change the shape of the river.
Doug: And so what we are doing with this river restoration project in this section that you're seeing is we are narrowing the low flow channel.
We are not messing with the floodplain whatsoever, but we're pinching the very low flow channel. And when you pinch it, What that does is it speeds it up and it makes it deeper. So this project is reinforcing our meadows to where we're raising the water table to where our meadows can be healthier.
Doug: We have been actively involved with Colorado River issues and we need to bring awareness to people about where their water comes from, how their water gets used and the solutions need to be more comprehensive than just taking water from somebody and giving it to somebody else.
Gustavo Arellano: After the break, how a faster snowmelt is changing the plants and wildlife at the river’s headwaters
Gustavo Arellano We've talked a lot, about the changes that the ranchers are seeing on the river and heard from them as well. What about other people that the two of you talked to? What were their concerns about what's going on with the Colorado River?
Ian James: Some people in the area have been noticing the environment and the headwaters changing rapidly as it’s gotten warmer. There have been large wildfires. The flows in streams have shrunk.
Ken Fucik: See over here how shallow it's getting. There, there's a marina up there and the weeds are all around that marina around the people's houses, their docks.
Albert Lee: Ken Fucik is a retired environmental scientist. Who was literally seeing his childhood playground change before his eyes.
Ken Fucik: It used to be the birds swam out here. Now they walk on the walk on the waters, so to speak.
Albert Lee: Native fish were being decimated with invasive fish species. What was the summer playground they used to go to as a kid, was turning into what he described as a smelly algae blue mess.
Ken Fucik: And as a result of having massive effects on our whole uh, watershed environment and on these lakes, we're seeing significant water quality problems.
Ian James: Along with water quality problems, some residents in the area are concerned about the amount of water that’s taken from the river and sent to Denver and other cities. Water is transported in tunnels that go through the mountains. And those diversions affect the amount that remains in the river and flows downstream.
Ken Fucik: Nobody's gonna win in this battle. Unfortunately, the front range thinks they're gonna be the winners on it.
Gustavo Arellano: The front range of course is the area east of the Rockies, home to Colorado’s biggest cities and most of the state’s population.
Ken Fucik: and they keep acting like winners, but, but in truth, there's too much occurring for it to be fixed. The best we can do is try to stop the degradation that's occurring.
Ian James: And so we heard concerns from some people that where is the water going to come from in the future as the river has less water to give, but the demands remain.
Gustavo Arellano: The upper basin is where the river starts. So do people who live there get for dibs on the water?
Ian James: Well, the states in the Upper Basin don’t exactly get first dibs. The water they are entitled to is spelled out in the 1922 Colorado River Compact. This also requires them to deliver an average of 7.5 million acre-feet per year to the Lower Basin states. And the Upper Basin states haven’t grown their water use on the scale that California and the other lower states have. For one thing, in California, we have the Imperial Valley, which uses the single largest share of the river and has some of the most senior water rights, dating back more than a century.
Gustavo Arellano: Ian, have the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming been asked to cut their water use?
Ian James: Yes. The federal government has been asking all seven states, both upper basin and lower basin, to find ways to dramatically cut water use to deal with the shortage.
The upper basin states have talked about a willingness to save water and to do more. And they've indicated that the lower basin states, California, Arizona, Nevada, that are using their full entitlements, that those states really should bear the lion share of the reductions. But there's been some push and pull between the lower basin and the upper basin. The politics are getting complicated between the states, the federal government, tribes, and all the different users.
Becky Bolinger: Sometimes it feels like that’s mine no it's mine, well i was here first and a lot of our laws are based on that right.
Ian James: Becky Bolinger, the climatologist we heard from earlier, says the difficult negotiations on using less water get into thorny water rights issues, but she hopes all the parties will be able to reach a compromise.
Becky Bolinger: Regardless of where you're located on the river, you know, if you're upstream or downstream, upper basin or lower basin, or if you got there first. Californians were there first. You know, Las Vegas was there last, but we're all here now and we're all part of the basin.
Ian James: It's not clear what may come out of this in terms of some type of an agreement to reduce water use. It sounds like the negotiations have been difficult and they aren't producing an agreement.
Becky Bolinger So if. How do you know you had a good compromise? And that's that everybody walks away from the table unhappy.
Ian James:: she explained this idea of the water savings account that we've had this savings account, but it's been overdrawn for a long time, and now that overdraft has increased and gotten that much worse, and so we're headed towards bankruptcy if something doesn't change.
Gustavo Arellano: Ian, Albert, thank you so much for this conversation for your work
Ian James: Thank you, Gustavo.
Albert Lee: Thank you.
Gustavo Arellano: We’ll be featuring episodes of our series: Crisis on the Colorado River on Fridays for the next couple of weeks. On our next episode we travel the Utah/Arizona border to see what exactly happens when you dam a draining river.
Gustavo Arellano: And that's it for this episode of The Times Essential News from the LA Times Kasia Broussalian and Denise Guerra were the Jefas on this episode. Mike Heflin mixed and mastered it. Jazmin Aguilera and Heba Elorbany edited it.
Our show is produced by Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo, and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Robert Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmin Aguilera, Heba Elorbany, and Shani Hilton, and our theme music is by Andrew Eapen .
I’m Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Monday with all the news and Desmadre. Gracias