Water Update (09/23/26)

It Was Dry, Now It’s WetThis week Rin Tara and John Fleck update the formidable river flows, reservoir storage increases, and building snowpacks after the Four Courners region experienced one of its driest years on record – until it got wet beginning in late September, substituting “one of its wettest” for “one of its driest.Rin also took time out to talk with Davide Ippolito, a river guide with OARS and a researcher with the non-profit Returning Rapids Project. He gave us some tips on getting out on the river.A few links to follow along at home:Stationarity is Dead, Paul Milly’s classic paper explaining why the challenge of climate change means plans and infrastructure we built in the past to manage water don’t work in our changing future. All the reservoir data, via the Bureau of ReclamationMore reservoir data, if you like the funky graphics of the US Army Corps of EngineersThe USGS Rio Grande at Albuquerque’s Central Avenue Bridge, Rin and John’s favorite stream gageNRCS Slumgullion Snotel site

The Great San Juan FloodIn this week’s Water Update*, Rin Tara and John Fleck give a rundown on the dramatic flooding on the San Juan River and across the Four Corners as the remnants of Tropical Storm/Hurrican Trudy were swept up in the storm track and dumped huge amounts of rain across the San Juan’s headwaters.More news and links:John’s blog post tracking the flood as of Saturday, Nov. 24 USGS gagesSan Juan near Bluff, UtahSan Juan at FarmingtonThe Navajo TimesNational Weather Service Albuquerque daily forecast discussion*Since we recorded, Arizona's Central Arizona Project has also moved to intervene in Nevada's ongoing NEPA case over the Post-2026 Record of Decision. More information available here: https://knowyourwaternews.com/cap-sues-u-s-over-illegal-colorado-river-actions/

Guest: Tanya TrujilloThis month Rin Tara and John Fleck are joined by Tanya Trujillo, water policy advisor to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and the state’s deputy state engineer, to talk about the water challenges facing the state as climate change saps New Mexico’s water supplies.A New Mexico native, Trujillo’s has a long water policy – general counsel for the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission; work in Washington, D.C., advising Sen. Jeff Bingaman and as an attorney in the Department of the Interior; the Colorado River Board of California; work with nonprofits working on western water; assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior for water and science in the Biden administration - before returning to New Mexico to her current post.The list of challenges Trujillo discusses is long: the need for modernization of state government’s water management tools, things like meters and the capacity to enforce water use rules - “the bread and butter of water management” – to the long term needs of water planning and nurturing new ideas among the next generation of the state’s water managers.Background:New Mexico 50-Year Water Action Plan

Preparing for what we hope will be a wet winter While the aftereffects of Septembers flooding have left many New Mexico communities still digging out, the water supply impacts after a very dry year have been substantial. In this week’s Water Update, Rin Tara and John Fleck talk about a greening bosque along New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande and a boost to New Mexico’s Rio Grande Compact outlook after what had been a dismal year. In other news: Free entry to New Mexico State Parks Building soil moisture at Slumgullion Pass in the Rio Grande headwaters (and lots of other Snotel sites) The history of the word “slumgullion” The federal government tries to sidestep New Mexico water law for border wall construction 

The Rains Return On this week’s episode, Rin Tara and John Fleck talk about Rin’s trip down Cataract Canyon on the Colorado River (totally work related!) while John stayed home and obsessed over weather radar and river gage readings as the Rio Grande, dry along large stretches through Central New Mexico for much of the summer, finally reconnected.To understand Cataract Canyon, check out the Returning Rapids ProjectTaos tightens water conservation measuresWednesday, Sept. 23, at the Guild Cinema: The Rio Grande: A Century of Water, Land and People in the Middle ValleyRibbons of Green – John talks about his new book, at the Guild Friday Sept. 25, 12:30 p.m.Money for Navajo Nation water projects 

Guest: Eric Kuhn “We need to understand the history.”-              Eric Kuhn This week Rin Tara and John Fleck are joined on Water Matters by their longtime friend and collaborator Eric Kuhn, arguably the preeminent historian of the intersection between Colorado River hydrology and the evolution of the institutions developed to manage it.Their subject is the arcane but now critically important issues of the Colorado River Basin’s “Upper Basin Initial Units,” a quartet of reservoir complexes on the Green, the Gunnison, the San Juan, and the main stem of the Colorado River. Approved by Congress in the 1950s and completed in the 1960s and ‘70s, the reservoirs have become a critical tool in managing 21st century shortages on the Colorado as water users and the federal government struggle to figure out how to share a shrinking river.For background, some of the work Kuhn, Tara, and Fleck have published over the years on the underlying issues:Kuhn, Eric, Katherine H. Tara, and John Fleck. "Unfinished Business: Twenty-First Century Questions Posed by Ambiguities in the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact and the Law of the River." NML Rev. 55 (2025): 417Kuhn, Eric, Katherine H. Tara, and John Fleck. "A Horse Named “Stream Depletion Theory”: The History and Negotiation of the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact." Natural Resources Journal 65, no. 1 (2025): 69-122.Kuhn, Eric, and John Fleck. Science be dammed: How ignoring inconvenient science drained the Colorado River. University of Arizona Press, 2019.The work of “The Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River,” a group of scholars and former water managers including Tara, Kuhn, and occasionally Fleck who write on the current Colorado River situation.

A River (Ever So Briefly) ReturnsThis week’s water update is a special edition as Rin Tara and John Fleck take you out to the Rio Grand in Central Albuquerque to experience the brief return of the Rio Grande to a river bed that has been dry for most of the summer.Rin and John were there, tape recorder in hand, on Thursday (Sept. 3, 2026) at midday as a pulse of water provided by the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, and Audubon Southwest crept slowly beneath the I40 bridge near Old Town.They could see the pulse shrinking as it moved downstream, which was the expected result – really the whole point of the exercise – as it soaked into the shallow aquifer that feeds the riverside bosque. Scientists are now monitoring vegetation response and changes in the groundwater levels beneath the bosque, to better understand how the system performs for future environmental management.More information: John’s blog post with the final flow data from the US Geological Survey gages along the river An explanation from Paul Tashjian at Audubon Southwest about how the pulse came together Bryce Dix at KUNM explains the pulse flow

A Search for Silver LiningsThe water numbers remain grim in this week’s Water Update, with 97 miles of drying in the New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande, which is not a record large number only because it rained enough to drop this week’s number beneath last week’s 100 miles of drying. But Rin Tara and John Fleck soldier on, searching for signs of hope in an otherwise grim water situation:Money for Albuquerque’s aquifer storage and recovery projectTortugas Dam rehabilitation project New Mexico Water Planning guidelinesProject Jupiter groundwater pumping rulingNevada sues federal government over Colorado River planTarantula migration

Guests: Kathryn Sorensen and Jack SchmidtThis week Rin Tara and John Fleck are joined by friends and colleagues Kathryn Sorensen and Jack Schmidt – members of the group that journalist Allen Best dubbed The Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River – to talk about the future of management of the Colorado River.Tara, Fleck, Sorensen, and Schmidt – along with fellow Wilburys Anne Castle and Eric Kuhn – have been collaborating for a number of years on analysis and recommendations for Colorado River management as reservoir levels drop toward record lows. In this episode, they lay out the details of the federal government’s newest analysis of future management options as the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico copes with the dramatic impact of aridification – drought made worse by climate change.Further information:Department of Interior Final Environmental Impact Statement on future operations of the Colorado River Lake Powell and Lake Mead reach record lowsThe most recent Wilburys report: Colorado River Basin Storage Continues Slide Toward System Crash

A Dry Year Gets DrierThis week Rin Tara and John Fleck do their best to find hope, but in a year this dry it takes more work. Note that at the time of posting this episode, the Frijoles Fire has grown to 7,794 acres. Via John and Utah State’s Jack Schmidt, Lake Mead and Lake Powell continue their decline toward the lowest levels since the reservoirs were first built in the 1930s (Mead) and 1960s (Powell).The latest forecast for the coming Super El Niño: lots of winter precipitation for California and Arizona, meh for the Upper Colorado and Upper Rio Grande basinsThe greening of the bosque downstream of Albuquerque’s wastewater treatment plant, via the Aug. 8, 2026 overflight of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellite