If you want to see the Colorado River change in real time, head to Lake Powell.

At the nation’s second-largest reservoir, water levels recently dipped to the lowest they’ve been since 1968. As the water recedes, a breathtaking landscape of deep red-rock canyons that cradle lush ecosystems and otherworldly arches, caverns and waterfalls is emerging.

On a warm afternoon after the reservoir had dipped to a record low, Jack Stauss walked along a muddy creek bed at the bottom of one of those canyons. He works as the outreach coordinator for Glen Canyon Institute, a conservation nonprofit that campaigns for the draining of the reservoir and highlights the natural beauty of Glen Canyon, which was flooded in the 1960s to create Lake Powell.

“I call this the moon zone,” Stauss said, as his shin-high rubber boots splashed through cold pools and eddies. “There are ecosystems that thrive in these side canyons, even when they’ve been de-watered for just, like, four years. You start to see stuff come back on a really unprecedented scale.”

Lake Powell is already receiving a major springtime boost. Until July, snow from an epic winter in the Rocky Mountains will melt and flow into the reservoir, and portions of those side canyons will flood anew. But for a brief moment in the late winter and early spring of 2023, Powell was creeping lower by the day. The falling water levels have created a harrowing visual reminder. Climate change has put the West’s key water supply on the ropes. At the same time, the drop reveals a spectacular landscape that environmentalists have heralded as a “lost national park.”

Stauss – an environmentalist who refers to Lake Powell as “the reservoir” – invited a small group of adventurous water wonks to chronicle its historically low water levels. He ambles along through the ankle-deep water, pointing up toward the infamous “bathtub rings,” chalky white mineral deposits on the canyon walls that serve as visual markers of the reservoir’s heyday.

“It’s staggering,” Stauss said. “The scale is hard to wrap your head around. The fact that the whole time we were just hiking, we would have been underwater, is shocking.”

The high water line, set in the early 1980s, is more than 180 feet above our heads. Even last summer’s high water mark is about eye level.

Reminders of Glen Canyon’s return to some form of pre-reservoir normal aren’t always as static as the bathtub rings on canyon walls. All around our feet, the shallow water teems with life. The crystal-clear creeks are full of spindly bugs that float on the water’s surface. Occasionally, toads jump from the stream’s sandy banks. Lizards bask in patches of sun. Bird calls echo off the smooth walls and melt into a distorted chorus.

Teal Lehto, who makes short videos about the Colorado River on TikTok under the name “WesternWaterGirl,” was also on the expedition. She pushed past a dense thicket of willows as we hiked through the canyon.

“It’s really, really interesting seeing the way that the ecosystem is recovering,” Lehto said. “And then there’s a little bit of heartbreak knowing that this area is probably going to be submerged again in a couple of months.”

After spending decades under mostly-still water, these canyons are laden with heaps of sediment that settled onto on the lake’s floor. Towering, crumbly banks of sand and dirt line the bottom of each side canyon, often high enough that some of the group’s ski enthusiasts try to carve down, sliding across the loose deposits in their sandals.

As those sandy banks start to erode, they also reveal traces of human activity. Old beer cans, golf balls, and other tattered bits of unidentifiable trash poke through the sediment, leaving lasting reminders of Powell’s double-life: a bustling haven for recreation, and a key piece of water storage infrastructure.

‘Nature bats last’

The group’s boat – a rented pontoon boat with plenty of space for the camera gear, camping setups and loaded coolers we’ve piled towards the back – wasn’t particularly agile. Stauss carefully piloted the craft through a “ghost forest,” where the blackened, skeletal tips of cottonwood trees are just seeing the light of day after decades underwater.

“Every time you come down here, it’s sort of a different game of steering the boat through stuff,” he said. “It’s kind of exciting, actually, like a little puzzle.”

After a slow cruise around the eerie labyrinth of treetops, Stauss leaned the accelerator back into neutral. The boat idled in front of the messy, muddy delta of the Escalante River. The river carries snowmelt about 90 miles through Southeast Utah before it runs into Lake Powell, in an area which was once the free-flowing Colorado River.

Another member of the expedition, Len Necefer, was in this same spot last year. Necefer, a member of the Navajo Nation, founded the consulting and media group NativesOutdoors and holds a PhD in engineering and public policy.

“It’s constantly changing,” he said. “In a few weeks you’ll be able to motor around and go up to Willow Canyon and all that. But right now it’s in this sort of crazy zone of transition.”

The group ponders a trek out onto the delta itself but decides against venturing into the mud, where footing looks uncertain. As the boat cruised into a U-turn, Necefer posited that “nature bats last.”

“Bottom of the ninth, end of a baseball game, nature is at bat and basically has the final say on what happens,” he said.

Nature is taking its last licks in nearly every corner of the sprawling reservoir. Elsewhere, a natural stone arch, once completely submerged, is now so high above the water that you can drive a boat underneath.

At the reservoir’s marinas, receding water has thrown a curveball to Lake Powell’s powerhouse recreation industry. In 2019, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area attracted 4.4 million visitors, more than Yellowstone National Park. The National Park Service says tourism brought $502.7 million to local economies.

But the recreation area – a world-renowned hotspot for houseboaters, wakeboarders, and jet skiers – has taken a hit.

At marinas along Lake Powell, the distance between the parking lot and the shore of the reservoir has gotten dramatically longer over the past two decades.

At Bullfrog Marina, where Stauss rented the pontoon boat, what was once a gentle ramp right next to the parking lot is now a strip of concrete hundreds of feet long. Docks and buoys once moored in water dozens of feet deep now lie crooked and dusty on the desert ground.

In the past few years, the National Park Service has had to make the Bullfrog Marina ramp even longer, chasing the water as it recedes. Further upstream, the Hite Marina, once a busy put-in for boats, is stranded so far away from the water that it is now shuttered.

‘Speechless’ at the Cathedral

Each hike into a new side canyon was the same. Stauss pushed the bow of the pontoon boat into the muddy shore, and the group hopped out clad with backpacks full of cameras. At each new mooring, the path was only visible a few dozen yards up the canyon before a dramatic curve obscured the route ahead.

On one hike, an extra-squishy patch of mud turned out to be quicksand. The trekkers tap danced across it, careful not to sink too deep, but egged each other on to test its limits. Filmmaker Ben Masters, a member of the expedition, wriggled around until he was waist deep and needed a hand to get unstuck.

“Indiana Jones taught me to stop resisting,” Lehto said as Masters pulled himself out of the muck.

After about a half hour of strolling, the crew got what it came for – a rare glimpse of Cathedral in the Desert.

Awe-inspiring as they are, the side canyons can blur together after a few hours of plodding through relatively indistinct curves in the rock.

This one is different.

The hikers round a corner and come upon a red-rock cavern. The group, chatty on the way in, falls silent for a moment.

“I’m kind of speechless, which is really funny for me, because I always have something to say,” said Lehto, the TikTok creator. “But it is gorgeous. It’s amazing to me to imagine that this was all underwater, and it will be underwater again soon.”

The canyon tapered into a kind of dome, where only narrow slivers of sunlight peek through. In one corner, at the foot of a giant sand mound, a thin waterfall trickled from above. The rivulet snaked through a crack in the rock before it dribbled into a frigid, still pool and echoed through the cavern.

“I kind of wish there was a choir here because I think it would be really beautiful,” Lehto said. “Anybody know how to sing?”

Nobody in the group chimes in. Most are silent, staring up toward the top of the waterfall and contemplating the best way to position their cameras.

After a few minutes of silent marveling, Stauss provides some context.

Cathedral in the Desert made a brief above-water appearance in 2005, only to be submerged again until 2019. Since then, fluctuating water levels have flooded in and out of the pocket, limiting the waterfall’s height.

“People used to boat up 100 feet above the waterfall,” he said. “It’s something we’ve been waiting for for a long time. It’s another one of these markers of restoration to see Cathedral come back and to know that it’s not just a fraction of what it once was, but it’s going to be full size.”

After the fall, a rise

Standing under the Cathedral’s ceiling of smooth desert stone, Stauss pondered the future of a region where Lake Powell, and the rest of the Colorado River’s sprawling network of storage infrastructure, are due for an overhaul.

“I don’t think we should just think that the drawdown of these reservoirs is over,” he said. “I think we should use the moment to rethink completely how we store, use and conserve water across the West—and I think Glen Canyon should be at the heart of that conversation.”

In some circles, Glen Canyon is a major thread in conversations about water management. Environmentalists argue that Powell should be drained and Glen Canyon should be allowed to return completely. Recreators disagree, and water managers have shown reluctance to break so sharply from the status quo.

But the Colorado River’s rapid drying has pushed the idea of draining Lake Powell from the fringe and given a semblance of legitimacy to water management ideas once considered far-fetched. The river, which supplies tens of millions across the Southwest, has faced dry conditions since around 2000. The seven U.S. states which share its water have been caught in a standoff about how to cut back on demand.

This year, deep mountain snow promises a serious boost, the likes of which have only been seen a handful of times in the past two decades. Runoff is expected to raise the reservoir’s surface by about 50 to 90 feet by this July.

But even the most cautious runoff estimates would leave the reservoir less than 40 percent full. Its levels will again begin to drop over the fall and winter.

One year of strong snow won’t be nearly enough to pull the reservoir out of trouble. Climate scientists say the Colorado River would need five or six winters like this one to rescue its major reservoirs from the brink of crisis.

The past few springs delivered relatively low runoff, leading to summers fraught with mandatory water cutbacks and emergency releases from smaller reservoirs – efforts primarily focused on keeping water in Lake Powell.

Water managers are under pressure to keep water flowing through hydroelectric turbines within Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back Powell. After decades as a rock-solid emblem of the nation’s Cold War era expansion into the West, dropping water levels are threatening one of the dam’s primary functions. If water dips too low, the federal government could be forced to shut off hydropower generators that supply electricity to 5 million people across seven states.

This wet winter will ease some of that pressure, although water managers have publicly emphasized the need to avoid “squandering” the benefits of an unusually snowy year. The favorable conditions could relieve the need for emergency changes to Colorado River management, allowing the seven states which share its water to wait until 2026 for broader changes. The current operating guidelines for the river are set to expire that year, and water managers are expected to come up with more permanent cutbacks to water demand before that happens.

Amid tense negotiations and pre-2026 posturing, environmentalists like Stauss and his colleagues at Glen Canyon Institute are arguing for a future which cuts out a need for Lake Powell entirely – decommissioning Glen Canyon Dam and storing Powell’s water in other reservoirs.

In the meantime, Stauss relished the brief glimpse at what that might look like.

“It’s a scary future for water in the West,” he said. “But as far as Glen Canyon goes, it’s a pretty amazing silver lining.”

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC, and supported by the Walton Family Foundation.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As the nation’s second-largest reservoir recedes, a once-drowned ecosystem emerges on Jun 3, 2023.

As the Biden Administration accelerated the permitting process for the Hermosa project, Patagonia Vice Mayor Michael Stabile said he was “shocked” by South32’s new projections of mine-related traffic impacts and concerned by its plans for dewatering. “They’re going to flood us with water and they’re going to flood us with trucks,” he said.

The post As Hermosa Project Ramps Up, Local Concerns Escalate appeared first on Patagonia Regional Times.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, met with tribal leaders representing a dozen Indigenous nations last weekend in a move that could expand protections for land around The Grand Canyon, permanently safeguarding the region from future uranium mining.

The proposed Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument would convert 1.1 million acres of public land surrounding Grand Canyon National Park into a National Monument, providing significant protections to tribal water sources, delicate ecosystems, and cultural sites, while curtailing the impacts of uranium mining — a proposal tribes in the area have been fighting for since 1985. Baaj Nwaavjo means “where tribes roam” in the Havasupai language, I’tah Kukveni translates to “our footprints” in Hopi.

The region has high concentrations of uranium and mining has been a feature of the landscape since the 1950s. When mining first began in the area, uranium was used primarily for nuclear weapons. Today, uranium from the Grand Canyon is used for nuclear energy plants and power reactors in submarines and naval ships. 

In 2012, then-Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, placed a 20-year ban on uranium mining on more than a million acres of federal lands near the Grand Canyon in order to protect surface water from radioactive dust and mining waste. Without increased federal protections, tribal leaders say mining claims can be made at the end of the 20-year-ban, re-opening the Grand Canyon to uranium exploration.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, mining in the area disturbs underground vertical rock formations called “breccia pipes” — formations that often hold hydrothermal fluid or extremely hot water heated by the earth’s mantle and filled with various gasses, minerals and salts, including uranium. When disturbed, those breccia pipes can release their contents into aquifers and eventually, larger water systems.

In 2016, the Pinyon Plain Mine pierced an aquifer flooding mineshafts, and draining groundwater supplies. Between 2016 and 2021, the Grand Canyon Trust estimated that more than 48 million gallons of water had flooded Pinyon’s mineshafts, and the National Parks Conservation Association has consistently reported uranium levels in that water exceeding federal toxicity limits by more than 300 percent.

When ingested, uranium can cause bone and liver cancer, damage kidneys, and affect body processes like autoimmune and reproductive functions.

In 2016, tribal leaders brought the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni proposal to the Obama administration, but were rejected. Now, the Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition, made up of 12 tribes with ties to the area, hope Secretary Haaland will encourage the Biden administration to protect the region.

“We can’t wait until the accident happens,” said Carletta Tilousi, a Havasupai elder and member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. “We are trying to prevent the catastrophe before it happens.”

The Havasupai reservation is an eight mile hike below the rim of the Grand Canyon and one of the most isolated communities in the United States.

But Tillousi says that while stopping uranium mining will be a major goal of the proposal, ongoing contamination issues must be addressed. The Pinyon Plain Mine continues to contaminate the Havasupai’s sole water supply, the Havasu Creek. Pinyon has been operating since 1986, and while the 2012 uranium mining ban stopped the construction of new mines, Pinyon is exempt due to its pre-approval. As of 2020, 30 million gallons of groundwater tainted with high levels of uranium and arsenic have been pumped out of the mines flooded shaft and dumped in an uncovered pond.

“We’re a small tribe, our tribe is made up of 765 people,” said Tillousi. “We need to protect our village and homes.”

This article was first published in Grist.

The post Tribes call for increased Grand Canyon protections appeared first on Buffalo’s Fire.

A member of the Tohono O’odham Nation was shot and killed in front of his home by U.S. Border Patrol agents Thursday night. Raymond Mattia was fired at 38 times, family members said.

Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT

It’s going to be a long hot summer for the striking writers of television and films.

A nationwide strike by the Writers Guild of America over working conditions and pay is already raising questions about how long Native-centric productions such as “Reservation Dogs,” “Dark Winds” and “Rez Ball” can continue if the strike goes on for months.

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Diné writer Sierra Ornelas is among those who have been on the picket line. She was co-creator of the series, “Rutherford Falls,” and oversaw a writers’ room that included four other Indigenous writers – Tazbah Chavez, Tai Leclaire, Jana Schmieding and Bobby Wilson.

Having five Indigenous writers for a series is believed to have been a first for a major television production, and her deal with Universal Television was renewed in August 2021.

“We really want to ensure the future of this job, the future of this business for the writers coming up,” Ornelas told ICT by phone from Los Angeles about the decision to go on strike.

“Television is a writer’s medium. I think that over the last few years our power has been taken from us. And I’ve been writing for television for 10 years, and I’ve seen over time the budgets have gotten smaller for writers. The ability for a writer to be on set or to stay on through the entire production is less.”

With the exception of late-night shows, which went off the air immediately, viewers may not notice anything amiss for a while, since networks and streaming services have plenty of banked content.

Production has already wrapped up for the upcoming new seasons of “Reservation Dogs” and “Dark Winds,” with “Reservation Dogs” set to open Season 3 starting Aug. 2 on Hulu and “Dark Winds” returning to AMC and AMCPlus in July.

“Rez Ball,” a new film about basketball backed by LeBron James, is set to be filmed this summer in New Mexico.

Reality shows, news programs and some of the scripted series made by overseas companies are unaffected by the strike, and most of the movies scheduled for release this year are past the writing stage.

Ornelas, however, said the strike could last months and the delays will pile up, but she believes the writers are making fair demands.

“Being a writer in television right now has changed drastically over the last five years,” Ornelas said. “Ironically, that’s been the years where more Native writers than ever have been staffed for television. It’s pretty ironic; they started letting brown and Black people make television right when they decided to stop paying us.”

‘Until something changes’

The Writers Guild of America, which represents 11,500 screenwriters, went out on strike May 2, with writers for studios, streaming services and networks walking picket lines coast-to-coast.

It looks to be several months before a new deal is made with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, and is likely to affect the Emmy Awards, scheduled for Sept. 18, and possibly delay the fall TV season.

The WGA has vowed to stay on with the strike for as long as it takes.

“The first week has shown, I think, just how committed and fervent writers’ feelings are about all of this,” Chris Keyser, a chair of the WGA negotiating committee, said in an interview with The New York Times. “They’re going to stay out until something changes, because they can’t afford not to.”

The writers want more money and more job security, especially regarding residual payments they get from streaming services, which have expanded to markets overseas. Prior to streaming, writers, directors, actors, and other creatives received residual payments whenever a show was licensed for syndication, for an international deal or for DVD sales.

Now that the streaming era is changing rapidly and DVD sales have slowed, the big streaming companies are reluctant to license their hit series, allowing them to keep subscribers and cut off those who benefited from the outside distribution.

The WGA has put forth proposals for mandatory staffing and employment guarantees. In what is called a miniroom, studios hire a group of writers to develop a series and write a few sample scripts in a few months. But by not officially ordering the series, the studios pay writers less than if they were in a traditional contract for a series.

With just a two- or three-month job, writers are then immediately looking for the next job if the show doesn’t get picked up. If a show does get optioned, fewer writers are hired since the outline and several scripts have already been written.

Writers also want companies to agree to guarantee that artificial intelligence will not take away from writers’ credits and compensation.

The strike has even caught the attention of President Joe Biden. During a White House screening for the film, “American Born Chinese,” which features Native Hawaiians, Biden called for the major studios to come up with a “fair deal” for striking writers during the event honoring Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

“Nights like these are a reminder of the power of stories, and the importance of treating storytellers with dignity, respect and the value they deserve,” Biden told CNN. “We need the writers, and all the workers, and everyone involved, to tell the stories of our nation and the stories of all of us.”

‘We’re not messing around’

Ornelas said she learned on the job, and wants to preserve that right for up-and-coming writers.

“I went to every production meeting, I was on set every day of my episode, and sometimes for other people’s episodes,” she said. “Coming from a weaver family, [Ornelas’ mother is award-winning Grey Hills Navajo weaver Barbara Teller Ornelas] you learn from your elders. You learn from the people who came before you how to do the job, so that you can one day teach younger people how to do the job.”

She continued, “What’s been happening is due to budget cuts, writers have not been allowed to learn on set how to do production, how to become showrunners, which is the job that I have. And so when and if they get their own shows, they’re going to be woefully unprepared for the job.”

The two sides are very far apart now, and Ornelas sees a long haul ahead.

“I hope that they come back to the table soon, make a deal with us,” she said. “I think that what we’re asking for is very fair. You see some of these CEOs of these companies making $250 million a year, which is half of the total amount that we’re asking for 12,000 writers.”

She said writers are a key component of a successful production.

“When you think about it, it all really starts with the writer,” she said. “The construction worker can’t build a set, the costume designer can’t pick the clothes. The actors can’t be cast until we fill up a blank page, until we write the scripts.”

She continued, “We’re dealing with big, streaming corporations and they’ve never had a great history of being kind to labor. But I do see a lot of solidarity, which has been amazing. We have the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild, and the Teamsters behind us, as they are all experiencing the same problems.”

Pressure is building for the studios to negotiate, Ornelas said.

“Right now we’re trying to shut down productions and slow them down to get them back to the table,” she said. “I’ve been on the picket line and the mood is really enthusiastic. I think everyone that is there, they understand why we’re there. The union is more unified than it’s ever been. The strike authorization vote was almost 98 percent, the highest it’s ever been, the highest turnout.

“Everyone is really hungry to get a good deal and to really express to these studios that we are in business and that we’re not messing around.”

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Pauly Denetclaw
ICT

WINDOW ROCK, Arizona — Navajo Nation President Buu Van Nygren was not coy about his intention to lift the COVID-19 mask mandates on the Navajo Nation once elected. This was one of his campaign promises that he made for his first 100 days. He’s kept that promise.

On Friday, Nygren signed an order that lifted the last of the COVID-19 restrictions that mandated masks be worn in schools, healthcare facilities and assisted-living homes.

“It’s an exciting time because it just shows that as president, I believe in our people at the local level, as well as really trying to empower them,” Nygren told ICT.

This decision was not made hastily. Since taking office the Nygren administration has been getting feedback from these facilities and institutions on what they wanted when it came to the Navajo Nation health mandates. According to Nygren, they wanted to have autonomy over their own policy and procedures.

“The schools, majority of them, wanted to lift it because it’s so hard to require the students to wear them in class, to go to school, all the write ups, and it was just really tough on the administrators,” Nygren said. “But as far as assisted-living facilities, that’s up to them. I know they run their own facilities. Health care facilities, that’s up to them.”

In January, Nygren lifted the general public indoor mask mandate with the exception of health care facilities, assisted living facilities and schools.

Beginning in spring of 2020, the Navajo Nation quickly sent workers home, shuttered offices and non-essential businesses, mandated masks, closed its borders to visitors and enacted curfews. This was in an attempt to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

The nation became a hotspot for coronavirus cases and deaths over the course of the pandemic.

Approximately 170,000 people who live on the Navajo Nation, according to the U.S. Census. The Navajo Department of Health reported nearly 84,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of May 5, 2023. The nation also reported 2,117 deaths.

The pandemic worldwide has claimed nearly 7 million lives in the last three years, according to the World Health Organization.

On Friday, the World Health Organization determined that the COVID-19 pandemic was no longer a global health emergency, saying the virus has been on a downward trend for the last year. The United States is set to let its health emergency order end on May 11.

“I think I’d be so hesitant if the Navajo Nation was the first organization to reopen,” Nygren said. “I’d be very hesitant but a lot of entities around the Navajo Nation have been reopened, some of them, over a year now, some of them into the months. We’re just playing catch up at the moment.”

Cabinet member Rhonda Tuni, and head of the Navajo Department of Health, supports the removal of the final mask mandates on the nation.

“We are very excited to finally lift the mask mandate all across the Navajo Nation,” Tuni said. “Continue to practice the guidelines, hand sanitizing, and anything else that you’ve learned throughout these last three years.”

As the school year winds down, the mask mandate for next year has been a topic of discussion for the public schools on the nation.

“We’re very thankful to President Nygren and his staff to not necessarily lifting the mask mandate but just making it an option for our families,” said Shannon Goodsell, superintendent of Window Rock Unified School District. “This provides an opportunity for all of our students, all of our moms across the Navajo Nation to make the best decision for their families in order to keep their children safe while they’re in our schools. On behalf of the public schools across the Navajo Nation, we would like to say thank you.”

Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni and White Mountain Apache Tribe are the handful of tribes that still have a mask mandate, according to the Arizona Department of Education.

Earlier this year, Nygren received backlash about his decision to lift the general mask mandate.

The response on Nygren’s Facebook live announcing the lift is mixed, some people agree but many do not.

“I’m not here to please everybody but I’m here to make decisions as president,” Nygren said. “I think that’s very important. You got to make decisions and move on.”

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