If you don’t like Colorado’s weather, wait 5 minutes. Or shoot seeds into the clouds.
Colorado River Basin
Posted inWater
State of unease: Tribes in the Colorado River basin without water rights
One hundred years after the signing of the Colorado River Compact, many Native American tribes still struggle to fully secure water rights.
Posted inClimate, Environment, Water
Denver streams are glorified fountains, supplied mostly by your sprinkler heads
Toss a Frisbee too far at the disc golf course in west Denver and you’ll hit water burbling at the bottom of Lakewood Gulch. Your errant Frisbee shouldn’t be underwater. Not this time of year. The other stream that runs into the confluence that makes up the disc golf park has a more historically accurate […]
Posted inBusiness, Climate, Coloradans, Economy, Environment, News, Water
As drought in the West worsens, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Colorado faces a dwindling water supply
TOWAOC — In late June, Simon Martinez drove along one of the dirt roads crisscrossing the parched rocky shrubland on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Farm & Ranch Enterprise, a 7,700-acre agricultural operation owned by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in the far southwestern corner of Colorado. In normal times, he would be driving past […]
Posted inClimate, Coloradans, Economy, Environment, News, Outdoors, Water
Colorado’s Water Plan has made progress toward ensuring supply, but the work’s far from done
By Sarah Kuta, Fresh Water News In the five years since Colorado’s Water Plan took effect, the state has awarded nearly $500 million in loans and grants for water projects, cities have enacted strict drought plans, communities have written nearly two dozen locally based stream-restoration plans and crews have been hard at work on improving […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, News, Outdoors
Colorado activates municipal drought response for second time ever as water forecast worsens
The state of Colorado has activated the municipal portion of its emergency drought plan for only the second time in history as several cities say they need to prepare for what is almost certainly going to be a dangerously dry 2021. Last summer, the state formally activated the agricultural portion of the plan, calling on […]
Posted inEnvironment, News, Outdoors, Water, Wildfire
Blazes in Colorado, California may be part of a climate-driven transformation of wildfires around the globe
The wildfires that exploded over the past few days in California and Colorado show clear influences of global warming, climate scientists say, and evidence of how a warming and drying climate is increasing the size and severity of fires from the California coast to the high Rocky Mountains. They may also be the latest examples […]
Posted inEnvironment, Growth, News, Politics and Government, Water
Water is Colorado’s most critical resource. So why isn’t it central to every local land-use decision?
In the early 1980s, the small city of Woodland Park started strategically planning how to protect its water supply for the future. “Because we have all junior water rights and a limited water supply, we knew we must be very careful about how we grow,” said Sally Riley, planning director for Woodland Park, which is […]