News roundup #12: Connected uncertainty
Where the water goes.
Uncertainty is one word of the moment. Living in it. Planning for it.
We also live today, perhaps more than ever in the history of our species, in a world run by connected systems. In how we trade. How we communicate. How we sustain life. In how we interact with water. In how we move water from Point A to Point B.
So when we live in uncertain times, uncertainty ripples outward. As I went through the news to put together this edition of the newsletter, uncertainty and connection were the words that stuck out to me. Not everything has to do with it, but a lot of the news seems bound now to how uncertainty on the federal level is rippling downward.
We can learn a lot from water itself here. The water cycle is a system tethered through visible and invisible connections. Move a lever in one place, affect many other places.
For every federal action, a local reaction
A few weeks ago, Politico reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency/DOGE ordered staff firings at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, an agency created to deliver water across the American West. Hobbling this federal agency, in particular, has direct consequences for local communities across the West.
How water is moved through the West’s plumbing system is an engineered maze—one only made possible by learned and institutional knowledge. It’s a maze tethered to the physics of hydrology, the law and hard infrastructure, one that cannot be changed on a whim, as some initially seemed to have believed. Losing staff capacity and knowledge, as a result, has significant risks, water districts warned in a letter, a sentiment echoed by the Colorado River Board of California. This is one area where the administration seems to have listened; Politico just reported that DOGE backed off on more firings.*
Of course, the backdrop here is Trump’s longtime use of California water as a political wedge. For a thoughtful take on how much more complex and connected that story is, the New York Times published a wonderful piece by photojournalist Ryan Christopher Jones about a place so otherworldly that it defies reductive narratives. He writes:
“…the so-called war over California’s water is a dangerous, flawed trope that reduces certain water uses to right or wrong, and turns the Delta into a place with no local stakes. Faced with threats of drought, climate change and water scarcity, we should not reduce this place to a warring of two — or even many — sides.”
*Shoutout to POLITICO’s California and water team for such good reporting here.
Cutoff grades
Where there is uncertainty, water is only one part of the equation.
Interview miners, and they often talk about cutoff grades. Simplified, it’s a term used to describe the calculus done to determine the minimum grade at which a deposit can be mined, considering all the costs, and make a profit, considering the global market.
There’s a lot of news and uncertainty about global markets right now.
It’s not only water. Tariffs, immigration, and the economy at large also play pivotal roles in the activities that water is used for—namely agriculture, but also mining.
Politico (again, they are doing such great work right now) ran an interview with the board chair of the Western Growers Association that was illuminating on this front.
“I’m fearful for California agriculture during this administration. We may be able to get more water, but if we lose our markets and prices go in the toilet, that’s not a very good trade-off. And if we continue to lose our workforce, and we lose funding for research programs, I think there are more negatives in the process.”
Of course, tariffs cut in different ways for different industries. If I were a reporter in Nevada right now, I would closely watch what is going on with the gold industry.
The risk of Glen Canyon Dam
Over the past year, the seven states that use the Colorado River have been deadlocked on how to move forward on renegotiating a set of guidelines that expire in 2026. The two divisions on the river—the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin—have each released their own plans. With time running out, the Biden administration issued a report that offered a “hybrid” approach early this year. Now, in a letter, Arizona, California, and Nevada are asking the Trump administration to take a step back and reset the talks.
More here from the Las Vegas Review Journal and KUNC.
What I found most interesting was the discussion around Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back Lake Powell and has long been criticized by environmental groups.
KUNC’s Alex Hager reports:
The second issue highlighted in the Lower Basin letter has to do with record low water levels and aging pipes at Glen Canyon Dam. Currently, water passes through hydroelectric generators inside the dam before flowing into the Colorado River. From there the water goes to tens of millions of people and a multibillion agriculture industry in the Lower Basin.
Water experts fear that shrinking supplies and heavy demand will keep straining Lake Powell, bringing the top of the reservoir below the intakes for the generators.
That could leave a set of relatively small, little-used backup pipes as the only means of passing water from Lake Powell to the other side of the dam. The end result would risk the Upper Basin states failing to send a legally required amount of water downstream each year.
…
“The prior administration’s approach to protecting the Lake Powell outlet works by reducing releases from Lake Powell—rather than making infrastructure repairs and improvements—is shortsighted and harms the Lower Basin States,” they wrote.
Connecting farmers to data
Anyone who has followed this newsletter for a bit knows that I’m really interested in the ongoing efforts to make water data more accessible and transparent for all. One of the programs doing that is OpenET, an open-source site that uses remote sensing to fill one of the largest gaps in water data—ET (or evapotranspiration). By knowing ET, irrigators and water managers can better understand water use and efficiency. Now, the OpenET has launched a new tool directed at helping farmers improve irrigation.
The tool includes numerous options for drawing or selecting field boundaries, generating custom reports based on selected models and variables, and automatically re-running reports at daily or monthly intervals.
The fine spatial resolution and long OpenET data record behind FARMS make these features more effective. Many existing global ET data products have a pixel size of over half a mile, which is too big to be practical for most farmers and ranchers. The FARMS interface provides insights at the scale of a quarter-acre per pixel, which offers multiple data points within an individual field.
“If I had told my father about this 15 years ago, he would have called me crazy,” said Dwane Roth, a fourth-generation farmer in Kansas. “Thanks to OpenET, I can now monitor water loss from my crops in real-time. By combining it with data from our soil moisture probes, this tool is enabling us to produce more food with less water. It’s revolutionizing agriculture.”
A groundwater pipeline in Western Utah could return
The Great Basin Water Network has new email records showing that a project to pipe groundwater from western Utah to Cedar City could soon return. The water nonprofit reported that it reviewed more than 300 pages obtained under public record laws:
The project targets Utah’s West Desert along the border with Nevada. The three-phase effort aims to pump and pipe more than 26,000 acre feet annually (8 billion gallons every year) from Pine Valley, Wah Wah Valley and eventually take an additional 10,000 acre feet every year from Hamlin Valley. The groundwater is part of the Great Salt Lake Desert Interbasin flow system, which connects to the Great Salt Lake’s groundwater system. It will siphon water away from special places, communities and the natural world.
These emails confirm our fears that Iron County water officials are hoping the Trump Administration will re-start the project permitting process that was officially paused in 2023 after GBWN, Indian Peaks Band of Paiute, Beaver County (UT) and other local governments built a coalition that paused the project.
Links from all of my open tabs:
Nevada’s groundwater levels trending in the right direction (KOLO 8)
Water is about to get a lot more expensive for millions of Californians (SF Gate)
As the Great Salt Lake recedes, industry rises (High Country News)
We see climate change in New Mexico (Writers on the Range)
Environmentalists appeal lithium project near Salton Sea (Desert Sun)
Will Colorado Springs growth come at the cost of livelihoods on the Eastern Plains? (Colorado Sun)
Real estate values and agricultural transitions in California’s Central Valley