Colorado State University’s crop-testing station near Akron grows varieties of black-eyed peas, testing for drought tolerance, fertilizer needs and more. (Michael Booth, The Colorado Sun)

Editor’s note

Where Colorado will find the water it needs to thrive is a more urgent question than ever amid historic drought, undeniable climate change and unprecedented interstate conflicts over limited river supplies.

The Colorado Sun is embarking on a “solutions journalism” series asking who in the state is doing their share to save precious water. Our solutions-oriented reporting will assess whether specific water conservation projects can free up water at a large scale, or whether local conservation is always overwhelmed by uncontrollable natural conditions or immovable market realities.

The Colorado Sun series “Can Colorado do more with less water?” will create a body of work showcasing what may or may not be possible in creating water solutions across the state. From Akron to Aspen, we’re looking for signs of success or failure that will help lead us to water security. 

AKRON

Surveying miles of sprouting Eastern Plains farm fields, the logic around Colorado’s deepening water crisis might sound simple. 

Colorado each year sinks deeper and deeper into a crisis of water shortages. 

Up to 90% of the water available in the state each year is used for agriculture. 

It takes 44 inches of water a year in Burlington to grow alfalfa. Only about 10 inches of water drops on Burlington in a year. 

It only takes 15 inches of water to grow a healthy crop of black-eyed peas in Burlington. 

So.

The numbers point to seemingly obvious questions: Why couldn’t a lot of eastern Colorado farmers switch crops to black-eyed peas, and sell their saved irrigation water to thirsty Front Range cities, or get paid to leave it in the Colorado and South Platte rivers for others to use? 

Could that help calm the intensifying  interstate and urban-rural wars over shrinking water supplies? 

Expand the questions across Colorado: Could Mesa County farmers leave more water in the Gunnison River by growing obscure but nutritious sainfoin as cattle forage? Would San Luis Valley farmers try easily quenched rye grass to help the dwindling Rio Grande and hold the soil against unhealthy winter dust storms? Can they grow camelina for bio jet fuel in Fruita? Take advantage of oil-producing sunflower varieties that thrive like weeds in Lincoln County? 

Yes.

But. 

Colorado’s farmers can and do grow anything and everything across the state’s wide range of climate and precipitation. They will experiment with any crop and adapt on the fly. 

But they need a market come fall. A farmer adventuring with black-eyed peas in April needs to know that a bumper crop from one farm won’t blow the whole limited market for the nutritious legume most popular in the American South and Middle East. Dairy farmers in Texas want more alfalfa than sainfoin. Some Colorado farmers still have unwanted hemp bales sitting in barns from a years-ago fad. 

“These folks are ready, they’re hungry for a solution, because using less water and recovering our aquifers in the San Luis Valley, it’s required, but it’s also our future. We don’t have a future if we can’t recover these aquifers,” said Heather Dutton, manager of the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District and a fifth-generation farm kid who grew up in the valley. “So there’s no fighting alternate crops down here. It’s just waiting for these markets to be developed. We need them faster, we need them right now rather than tomorrow.” 

It’s not magic — it’s weather and agronomy and cash flow, Dutton said. Colorado’s water solutions lie with alternative crops, and irrigation nozzles that save 2% of flows, and welcoming local food markets … all of the above. 

“There’s no silver bullet, it’s all silver BBs,” Dutton said. “We’re going to have to do all of this. That’s the long game.”

The Colorado Sun’s Solutions Journalism project is launching today with the state farm economy because that’s where the water is. That does not mean we are asking only farmers what their solution or sacrifice will be — far from it. In this series, we are heading to Aspen, Aurora, Akron, Alamosa and Adams County. Who is doing their part to save Colorado water? What are luxury homes doing? What are data centers doing? What are landscapers doing? 

We start with farms because one of the most common reader questions goes like this: If we need to use less water, and farms are using up to 90% of the water, can’t we just grow something else? 

Colorado farmers, ranchers, researchers and economists are more than happy to discuss the answers, in detail, right after they point out an important fact: 100% of Coloradans eat food. It’s a shared responsibility. 

First, the problem: 

Long-term climate change, shorter-term drought and continued growth in the Western U.S. are combining for a growing mismatch between our water demands and our annual water supply. Lake Powell, a key to the clean water plumbing system for 40 million people in seven states, will catch only 13% of its usual runoff this year. U.S. officials plan to release only 6 million acre-feet from Lake Powell for downstream states in 2026, down from 7 million to 9.25 million in prior years. Annual flows in the San Luis Valley’s streams are down an average of 18% from 20 years ago. 

(An acre-foot covers nearly a football field-size piece of land in 12 inches of water. It’s nearly the equivalent of a year of natural precipitation on the Eastern Plains, or the consumption of two to four urban households for a year.)

Meanwhile, cities like Aurora, Thornton, Colorado Springs and other growing Front Range cities, buy up farm water and spend years arguing with rural communities over whether taking that water will dry up local economies and irreparably alter a way of life. 

Colorado officials have tried a number of grant and mitigation programs to shift water from farm use to virtual water banks that could satisfy federal compacts with Lower Basin states. They’ve also tried alternatives to traditional farm irrigation that would capture water savings to be used by willing city buyers while not permanently drying up the land. 

“Growing something different” remains at the heart of many of those efforts.

Catching an answer in the rye 

The San Luis Valley is the southernmost snow-driven irrigation system in the Western Hemisphere, Dutton notes. Anyone making long-term economic plans in the valley needs to know how perilous that fact is, given how climate change has already cut into Colorado’s snowpack. Meanwhile, the state engineer periodically shuts down wells in the valley in order to meet interstate compacts to raise depleted aquifer levels. 

Many farmers are well aware that a cereal grain like rye uses only a third to a half of the irrigation water required for other popular valley grains. Dutton joined forces with Sarah Jones of Jones Farms Organics in Hooper after a 2023 spring dust storm eroded topsoil and blanketed the valley. Jones Farms was trying rye as a winter cover crop that could hold down and enrich soil meant for potatoes in other seasons. 

Add in Alamosa-based Colorado Malting Company, supplying grains to distillers and brewers, and now there was a team of experts who could apply to the Colorado Water Conservation Board for a water-saving grant. The board provided about $400,000 for education, marketing and other support. 

“We set out to work with 10 farmers and have them plant 1,200 acres of rye for the water savings, and the improvement to soil health and wind erosion,” Dutton said. “Of that, we said, we’ll commit to selling 300 acres of harvest. And we will use some of the grant to grow the market.” 

Marketing rye means expanding possibilities beyond the tang of an intense marble rye soaking up mustard and pastrami at your local deli. Rye can be mixed with wheat flour to lighten the blend in bread, become the base flour for cookies and pastries, be distilled into whiskey, and more. Dutton and partners found 100 potential customers for a new local rye supply. 

“And farmers being farmers, the first year, right out of the gate, they grew over 4,000 acres, because they’re like, wait a minute, this makes a ton of sense,” Dutton said. 

Valley farmers were able to produce a healthy rye crop using about a third of the water usually applied to other popular crops. And when the Rye Resurgence Project went out to sell its committed share of the acreage, they averaged 62 cents a pound, when rye historically has sold at 30 to 40 cents a pound. 

Nonfarm citizens of the valley have also reaped some of the benefits of the slight change in mindset. They hear about water shortages and climate change in a sea of other world problems, Dutton said, and they wonder what to do. Buying a muffin made in Alamosa made from local rye flour is not everything, but it’s more than nothing. 

“On the larger stage in this country, there’s so much going on, and people feel overwhelmed in a lot of different ways,” Dutton said. “And so to recognize that as an individual we can make a difference. … It’s really complicated, but it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.” 

Yes, they do know beans about it 

For all the recent political and social drama about the urban/rural divide, city and country Coloradans still have a few things in common when it comes to water and the land. 

When it rains over the city, a homeowner looks gratefully at the sky and thinks, “I can turn off my sprinklers for a week.” 

When it rains over the plains, a farmer thinks the same. 

Growing corn in Burlington takes 26.2 inches of water across a season. If it rains and snows the expected 8.1 inches by late summer, a farmer only has to add 18.1 inches of irrigation to raise a decent crop. Sugar beets, though, need a total of 33.7 inches. 

Eastern Colorado farmers know corn if they know anything, said Joel Schneekloth, who retired this spring from his longtime job as a crop and water specialist for the northeast at the Colorado State University Water Center. Between demand for corn as feed and silage, and as an ethanol fuel stock for plants in Nebraska and Colorado, farmers know in the spring that they are likely to at least have cash flow in the fall to get them through another year. 

So Schneekloth and his team face a bumper crop of questions when they suggest northeastern farmers try a less-thirsty, drought-resilient plant like black-eyed peas. Also known as cowpeas, the nutritious legume has been a staple in southern states, in Africa and in the dry Middle East. 

Black-eyed peas get peak production with only 15 inches of total water in a season, Schneekloth’s charts show.

“It just does not show water stress like other crops do,” Schneekloth said. “They don’t wilt in the heat of the day. Part of that is the genetics. They’re a sub-Saharan crop.” 

Not only did they take less of the precious local water supply, but in theory it should be easier to get vital crop insurance on black-eyed pea stands, he added. Premiums could be cheaper because it’s less likely a drought will force the farmer to cash in on the policy.  

Saves water, smoother taste than pinto beans (in Schneekloth’s expert opinion), and gives farmers valuable risk options. … What’s the limitation? 

For one, said Schneekloth’s colleague at the CSU Akron crop test station, Sally Jones-Diamond, the gears from hundreds of years of agriculture bureaucracy turn slowly. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s risk management office doesn’t yet see black-eyed peas as a “common” crop, even though CSU is planting test patches of black-eyed peas from around the world right next to USDA experimental crops at their Akron shared station. Specialty crops require specialized written insurance agreements, Jones-Diamond said. 

“One day if they get their act together, and they get black-eyed peas added, then yes,” she said, farmers could get a price break on their risk. “But not as of now.” 

For another hindrance, look at equally slow-turning markets.

Many cultures have a tradition of a black-eyed pea stew for good luck on New Year’s Eve, but the other 364 days of the year can be brutal. Peru grows a lot of cowpeas and because of cheap rural labor can ship it all over the Western Hemisphere at prices lower than what U.S. farmers need. 

There are 1.3 million acres of corn grown by Colorado farmers each year. If only a few thousand of those were switched to black-eyed peas, the small handful of buyers in Colorado and Kansas would be flooded. 

“We could grow the heck out of them,” Schneekloth said. “As the old saying goes, one pickup load meets the market. One pickup load plus a 5-gallon bucket tanks the market.” 

Another farming wild card: Political whim 

Troy Waters can talk about alfalfa and winter wheat seeds all day. But one of his favorite conversation pieces in the back pocket of his Carhartts is a humble Mediterranean plant called false flax, which grows well at his multigeneration family farm in Fruita. 

The hierarchy at the Waters farm, which has long made a better living by growing crops for seeds to sell to other farmers, starts with water watchdogs’ favorite villain: alfalfa. The extremely nutritious and extremely thirsty bales can always raise welcome cash from local cattle ranchers or well-off dairy operations in Texas or Saudi Arabia. But Alfalfa can take up to 3 acre-feet of irrigation water in a season of multiple cuttings. 

Winter wheat takes significantly less water, and has added benefits of putting out roots to hold soil in damaging winds. But, like corn, it’s an enormous commodity crop with international competition and razor-thin profit margins in a good year. 

False flax is scientifically known as camelina. Run a healthy camelina crop through a press, and you get cattle forage, plus oil that can be mixed at 50% with kerosene to make a biodegradable and sustainable jet fuel. 

“In this valley, we could apply a little over an acre-foot of water less to camelina than we did to winter wheat,” Waters said. 

Waters took a gamble in 2024 and planted 235 acres of camelina, to grow seed stock for a national renewable energy company called Vision Bioenergy Oilseeds, based in Idaho. 

“I actually stuck my neck out. I did find out, we can raise it in this county, it yields really good, and I found out it takes a lot less water than winter wheat to raise a good crop,” Waters said. “The problem with it is, our current political climate changed a bit.” Fast-moving economic waves also rock the planning.

Major energy producers are now forming partnerships to grow camelina on large-scale farms, partly in response to growing demand from European nations mandating cleaner jet fuel mixes. But to plant camelina at scale, farmers need thousands of available acres, and expensive new equipment to handle camelina’s tiny seeds. 

“The seed company needs at least 2,000 acres to send out a train, otherwise it’s not worth it,” said Greg Peterson, director of the Colorado Ag Water Alliance. “And OK, we need a weigh station in Fruita, we need storage in Fruita. You can’t even go to a bank to get a loan for a grain silo anywhere, they’re not interested in funding that.”

One of the primary biofuel seedoil companies is backed by ExxonMobil, and the other is backed by Shell, Waters noted. “You tell me, with the price of oil right now, where are these companies going to throw their money? Drilling for more oil, or for a seed crop they’re still trying to convince farmers to raise?”

“The company I contracted for was willing to come in here and contract for 5,000 acres, and that’s a lot of acres in this valley for seed production,” Waters said. “But the whole industry’s kind of pulled back its horns a bit, and they don’t need any more. They overproduced in 2024. It just doesn’t pay.”

Widespread solutions will require deeper partnerships

Short of a central, Soviet-style planned farm economy, Coloradans interested in saving agricultural water will have to continue seeking piecemeal demonstration projects and solutions.

A typical, marginal Colorado farm this spring is facing fuel prices up 25%, fertilizer prices up more than that if they can get it at all, volatile tariffs playing havoc with international demand, and drought water allotments as low as 10% of normal. They need risk partners to try for the kinds of water savings the public tends to demand, said Peterson.. 

“I don’t want to come off as doom and gloom,” Peterson said. “I’m finding money to do alternative crop projects all the time. It’s just that I need 10 more people like me helping.” 

State agencies often have money for water experimentation, in $50,000 to $100,000 increments, Peterson noted. He helped a farmer in Conejos County find grant support to grow sainfoin as cattle forage in the southern end of the San Luis Valley instead of alfalfa. 

That experiment happens to coincide with impacts of climate change mentioned in a recent Colorado School of Mines study, where higher spring temperatures mean snowpack runoff is happening earlier. That matches up well with when sainfoin needs its first water, Peterson said. 

“But the saying with sainfoin is that year one, it sleeps; year two, it creeps; year three, it leaps,” he added. “Unless we figure out the economics right, you’re going to have to subsidize it until then.”

Colorado’s city water agencies have billions of dollars in revenue each year. Many Colorado counties facing buyups of their local agriculture water by cities are demanding more ethical treatment: Guarantees that dried-up land will be planted with sustainable local grasses, or requiring the city governments to backfill lost local tax revenues from unproductive land. 

Those water agencies will likely become more involved in the kind of water-saving partnerships that could give farmers the assurances they need to experiment, Peterson said. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next few years we’re ready to start making those asks,” Peterson said. “We have the data.”

In Fruita, Troy Waters and the son-in-law he hopes will continue the family farm are open to more options. What they are asking Front Range residents to understand is the basic economics of their lives. 

“We farmers don’t farm just for the fun of it,” Waters said. “We’ve got to make a living. So we can farm the next year.”

In our corner of the desert Southwest, it’s been spring since the fall.

The spell of October’s chinchweed marked the unexpected start of a second spring that I didn’t think would last beyond Halloween. Pectis papposa naturally comes to light weeks after summer monsoons, but I had never seen the tiny yellow flowers spill so magically across the Mojave. Especially so late in the year. Their bright display was a struck match to my exposed cornea, hypnotizing me into oblivion. It was disorienting — experiencing so much life even as the Northern Hemisphere began to tilt away from the sun.

Fall was supposed to be a time of shedding sunny summer habits, harvesting and hunkering down for cold, snowy nights. But the second wind of spring meant those cozy habits could die hard: We baked in the sun like chuckwallas, planted penstemons and searched for fairies in the buds of our bladderpod.

Howling storms hit the desert one after another, flooding nearby communities with wildfire debris and turning our dirt road into a date shake. Hints that second spring was transforming into forever spring came queerly as the days grew shorter but stayed warm. Some Joshua trees bloomed around Thanksgiving, and botanists worried they might not be serviced by the yucca moth, their only pollinator. But it wasn’t until the winter solstice that all hell broke loose: The flowerfields of Anza Borrego Desert State Park gushed with color three months early. My husband and I skirted the Salton Sea to see them and were lulled by tens of thousands of devil’s lanterns as we walked toward the looming phantom of a mountain. Giant white evening primrose flowers (Oenothera deltoides) lit the way and led us deeper into a beautiful nightmare.

What else could we do but attempt to enjoy the world out of sync? What’s the difference between strolling through an unusual bloom with chronic climate dread and attending Lady Gaga’s Mayhem Ball while LGBTQ+ rights are torched? Bright lights, whether flowers or strobes, can ignite us in dark times. But they can also be distractions: Did the deep state seed the clouds to cause the blooms and sidetrack us while they built concentration camps and mined our mountains to arm war criminals? Slow down, Sherlock; it’s OK to occasionally photosynthesize and expose our showy sex organs in the breeze as we monkey-wrench dystopia. We might lose ourselves if we don’t.

In true spring, after winter’s big rains, Anza Borrego’s flowerfields are often filled with Northbound songbirds, bees and the flap of over a billion painted lady butterflies. But that afternoon, during one of the darkest days of the year, there was an eerie silence that stopped my husband and I in our tracks. I knew then our reality had become a modern Southwestern Gothic. All the components of terror were there in our tale: supernatural plants, a chronically ill narrator (“Greetings …”), a generational curse called climate change, a vampire (more on that later) and, of course, a lone raven quorking by the road.

What else could we do but attempt to enjoy the world out of sync?

I’d been thinking of The Picture of Dorian Gray, perhaps one of the queerest Gothics, which some view today as an allegory for climate colonialism. Oscar Wilde’s main character, handsome Dorian Gray, descends into reckless hedonism throughout the book. One day, he wishes for a portrait of himself to “bear the burden of his passions and his sins” while he remains forever young. As the portrait’s face becomes hideous over time, he locks it away in a secret room. At one point, after a loved one dies, Dorian even declares, “If one doesn’t talk about a thing, it has never happened.” This denialism is prevalent in our 21st century and at the heart of why some authors are increasingly drawn to the Gothic as they write about climate change. “The Anthropocene remains a prophesy, a promise of future violence, and thus a ghostly, haunting presence,” the editors of Dark Scenes of Damaged Earth: The Gothic Anthropocene wrote.

Things only got creepier as forever spring was interrupted by summer-like heat spikes that broke California records in March. We followed more blooms during one heat wave, dropping to the floor of Death Valley, where we found sprawling gravel ghosts (Atrichoseris platyphylla) and caltha-leaf phacelias (Phacelia calthifolia). BEWARE THE PURPLE FLOWERS, a small visitor center sign declaimed like a soothsayer, warning of dermatitis. We slept naked without sheets under the “Worm Moon” before it eclipsed in bloody streaks, sweating the whole night through. In that silvery light, I could see the haunting bodies of flowers outside our tent. We humans often report ghosts of people, sometimes animals, but rarely other lifeforms. Especially extinct ones. Imagine crushed endangered buckwheat haunting Cybertrucks. Or a ghost eubacteria, like prochlorococcus, appearing at the foot of an oil company CEO’s bed on Christmas Eve.

Waking up to sunwashed flowerfields was the Dr. Jekyll to the night’s Mr. Hyde. We moseyed through desolate washes and canyons to find yet more uncanny blooms. Following a wash within a maze of an alluvial fan, we came to a lovely vista. The hills below us rolled, and 3-foot-tall sunflowers danced on every crease. We got low on the sand beside the flowers for a bug’s-eye view, looking up like the sphinx moth caterpillars that were munching their leaves. Joy and whimsy were so back.

But then we discovered a horrific murder scene: a sunflower strangled by bright orange vines. A small-tooth dodder plant had leapt out of the ground, pierced the desert gold with its “teeth” and was extracting its resources like a pumpjack. This slow violence on a 94-degree winter day was the key that unlocked Dorian’s secret room for me. Inside hung the ghastly portrait of the parasitic human greed that had caused this bizarre and worrisome Western winter. What happens when the haunted castle we were taught to fear is actually a superbloom?

We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

This article appeared in the May 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “A beautiful nightmare.”

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Over the course of his long life, media mogul and philanthropist Ted Turner bought vast stretches of land in Colorado, New Mexico, Montana and Nebraska and managed them for conservation. That work is expected to continue, even after Turner’s death on May 6 at age 87.

One of the Turner family’s largest properties, the 363,000-acre Armendaris Ranch in south-central New Mexico, is shielded from development by the nation’s second-largest permanent conservation easement. According to a statement on Turner Enterprises’ website, the rest of the roughly 2 million-acre ranchland empire will “continue to be protected, limiting future development and parcellation.”

“Turner Ranches, the Turner Foundation and his other nonprofits intend to do stewardship and restoration on those lands,” said Jonathan Hayden, executive director of New Mexico Land Conservancy, which holds the conservation easement on the Armendaris Ranch. Turner “will be known for being an innovator in the conservation space and being willing to try new things, from reintroducing desert bighorn to bison restoration — things that take a lot of capital and vision.”

Who owns the West?

Turner, who bought his first ranch in 1987, spent the following decades acquiring 12 more in six Western states. He focused on buying properties that were suitable for raising bison, intending to use the animals to restore the land to its original state as well as supply meat for his restaurant chain, Ted’s Montana Grill. By all accounts, his land purchases were about more than easements, a tool some wealthy landowners use to avoid taxes. Turner said publicly and on his website that his properties would continue to pay taxes to contribute to local communities. He also viewed his land as a way to bring back some species that are at-risk in the West and across the nation.

He made headlines with vast properties like the Vermejo Ranch in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, which he bought from the oil company Pennzoil. For years, his ranch managers worked to restore the overgrazed and overused 558,000-acre expanse, ultimately bringing back more than 1,200 bison and reviving riparian areas along 30 miles of streams and more than a dozen lakeshores.

In 1997, Turner created the Turner Endangered Species Fund, which reintroduced Mexican wolves at his Ladder Ranch in New Mexico and black-footed ferrets on the Bad River Ranch in South Dakota as well as on Vermejo. He also brought westslope cutthroat trout to his Flying D Ranch in southwest Montana.

The Armendaris is focused on “sustaining wildlife species in a time of unprecedented drought,” Hayden said. Operators there have restored populations of imperiled desert bighorn sheep, reintroduced the endangered Bolson tortoise and the aplomado falcon, and protected habitat for more than a million seasonal and migratory bats in the famous Jornada Bat Caves.

Turner “will be known for being an innovator in the conservation space and being willing to try new things, from reintroducing desert bighorn to bison restoration — things that take a lot of capital and vision.”

The ranch “was both a keystone project and a catalyst that demonstrates how integral private land conservation can be to preserving broader ecoregions,” Hayden said, noting that other landowners have followed Turner’s lead. Since the completion of the Armendaris easement, the New Mexico Land Conservancy has facilitated two conservation leases totaling 120,000 acres on state public lands and another five on private land.

Ted Turner makes a deal

But Turner’s ranches also concentrated on economic output, raising upward of 45,000 bison, as well as hosting sustainable timber harvest and high-end guided hunting, fishing and ecotourism, according to Turner’s websites. In 2021, he created the Turner Institute of Ecoagriculture with the goal of “conserving ecosystems, agriculture, and rural communities,” especially on his 80,000-acre McGinley Ranch, which straddles the Nebraska-South Dakota border.

“He understood from a practical standpoint that commerce and conservation have to go hand in hand,” said Lesli Alison, CEO of Western Landowners Alliance. “If commerce is pitted against conservation, nature will lose every time.”

This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation and the Mighty Arrow Family Foundation.

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As the worst snowpack in half a century kindles potential for a devastating wildfire season on Colorado’s 24 million federal acres, Colorado has lost more federal land management workers than any other state.  

A new analysis of federal workforce data by two policy-watchdog groups — Prospect Partners and Hawk Eye Strategies, consulting firms made up of former government employees, including advisors in the Biden administration— shows that Colorado ranks at the top of states for public lands agency job cuts last year. Colorado lost 1,753 positions from agencies including the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management amounting to a 26% loss in the public lands workforce in 2025. 

The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts of nearly 300,000 federal jobs by the Department of Government Efficiency included 6,000 public lands jobs at 10 federal agencies in six Western states. 

“We are heading into a summer of heightened risk with unprecedented low federal capacity,” said Bernie Kluger, a coauthor of the analysis with Prospect Partners and a former senior consultant for the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Biden administration, in a statement. “At a moment when federal agencies should be surging in capacity to protect Colorado communities from drought and fire, the Trump administration’s cuts instead eliminated the scientists who forecast the risk of these disasters.”

About 60 Forest Service jobs were cut from the 2.3 million-acre White River National Forest, the busiest forest in the country with more than 8 million annual visitors who stir an economic impact of more than $1.6 billion in Colorado’s high country communities.

Scott Fitzwilliams supervised the White River National Forest for 15 years before resigning last year as visitation soared and he was forced to slash his workforce. 

A year later he still can’t make any sense of the cuts. 

“There was no rhyme or reason that I could see. They did not have any kind of strategic approach to the downsizing. If they tell you differently, they are lying,” he said in an interview with The Colorado Sun. “It just seemed random. When you think of the type of visitation we get and the needs of our forests, it’s just disheartening to think about how fewer people are out there doing this critical work.”

More than a third of those job losses in Colorado last year were newly hired or probationary employees on the frontlines of the agencies, including workers in visitor services, field operations and emergency operations. Another third of the job losses came from the reassignment of Interior Department staff from regional offices to the department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. 

And now the Forest Service, as part of a “sweeping restructuring” will be moving its headquarters from D.C. to Salt Lake City in a move that will close all 10 of its regional offices across the country, including the Region 2 headquarters in Lakewood, where the Federal Center employs more than 6,000 workers in 28 federal agencies. The Forest Service also is consolidating all of its research centers into a single operation in Fort Collins. 

“We need these foresters and oil and gas specialists on the ground here in Colorado,” Fitzwilliams said. “I really do worry about the work getting done. I’m not sure they have a plan. It’s like their war plan: ‘Let’s bomb these people and figure out what happens later.’”

An under-the-public-radar federal rule change is shrinking pay for migrant farmworkers at the same time a highly debated new state law is going to cut into their overtime pay. 

The U.S. Department of Labor has changed the way wages are calculated for H-2A seasonal workers and is allowing employers to pay $2 to $3 less per hour to those workers who receive housing as part of their work contracts. The federal government requires that housing for H-2A workers.

This change championed by the Trump administration will affect the estimated 3,500 H-2A workers who toil in Colorado’s fields and orchards each year. 

The Department of Labor isn’t calling this a wage decrease or a pay deduction. The new rule refers to it as a “downward compensation adjustment.” It doesn’t show up as a deduction on paychecks. The paychecks are simply smaller.

“We can’t call it a pay deduction. It’s a housing adjustment to the wage,” said Liz Talbott, who handles the accounting for H-2A workers at Talbott Farms in Palisade.

Whatever the term used to describe the change, this new federal rule means that H-2A farmworkers in Colorado who earned $17.84 per hour last year, will get $15.16 this year. 

The change could have dropped wages even further except that Colorado’s minimum wage requirement prevented the housing adjustment from taking a bigger bite out of paychecks. The hourly wage for Colorado farmworkers can’t go below $15.16. In some states without that minimum wage protection, H-2A farmworkers will receive as little as $9 per hour.

The new rule does not require employers to pay less, so some are opting to ignore the Department of Labor rule and to keep wages at the same level as last year.

“We are not changing it,” said Gwen Cameron, who employs 11 H-2A workers in the field crew at her Rancho Durazno orchards in Palisade. “We can still be profitable.”

She said she knows of other farms, including Honey Rock Landing in Dominguez Canyon between Delta and Grand Junction, and Topp Fruits in the North Fork Valley, that have also opted to keep wages at the 2025 level. 

News of lower wages delivered just before farmworkers headed north 

At Talbott Farms near Palisade where 95% of the workers are employed with H-2A visas, co-owner Bruce Talbott said they will make use of the new “formulation.” He said labor makes up 85% of his cost to produce peaches.

“I think this is good for the industry and good for the workers,” Bruce Talbott said. “These guys feel like they have won the lottery when they come here. They are treated well. They are still quite happy. These guys have no expenses except for food. They send 95% of their wages home.” 

He said this season some of those workers will be living in a newly completed 24-unit bunkhouse at Talbotts that can hold 48 workers.

Tuxedo Corn in Montrose County has long prided itself on fair treatment of its workers and is a participant in the national Fair Food Program. It has also opted to pay the lower wage.

“It gives me no pleasure to do that,” said David Harold, who co-owns Tuxedo with his father, John Harold. “We are adjusting everything we can to be legal but reduce our costs.”

Harold insists the new federal rule does not mean he is charging his workers for housing that Tuxedo has long provided at no charge. 

“I am not charging for housing,” Harold said. “I am paying the lower rate allowed because I provide housing.”

Harold said he advised his H-2A workers at the end of last year’s season that there might be cutbacks in paychecks this year.

Some migrant farmworkers had no idea about the lower pay until they showed up at the American Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico, said Iriana Medina Roy, the executive director of La Plaza, a resource center for migrant workers in Palisade. 

H-2A rules require migrant workers to travel to Monterrey to sign their work contracts and board buses that take them to jobs across the United States. Some reportedly opted to return home when they learned of the lower pay. 

“The workers are not happy. But work is work,” Medina Roy said. “For me, it seems not just. It is not fair.”

Cameron said there is still a lot of confusion among workers about the wage adjustment that is part of a byzantine set of tiered pay changes called the Adverse Effect Wage Rate.  

The primary purpose of the Adverse Effect Wage Rate is to prevent the employment of foreign workers from negatively impacting the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers.

Calculating wages to fit within that framework includes having to establish pay levels based on different tiers of skill levels and on the fact that domestic workers generally do not receive housing benefits as migrant workers do.

Liz Talbott said she tried to let workers know about the change coming in their paychecks, but for the first group of 50 Talbott’s workers who came to the Monterrey consulate in January and February, there was little information from the Department of Labor to pass on to workers. Growers say they are still sorting through the perplexing rules — an effort that has been slowed and complicated by the recent government shutdown.

“We didn’t receive a lot of guidance so we didn’t have a lot of information for our workers,” she said.

She said she hopes to be able to provide better information for 45 H-2A workers who will come to Talbott Farms in June. 

Bruce Talbott said the bigger concern for his H-2A workers now is the new state legislation, Senate Bill 121, that will increase the point at which agricultural workers are eligible for overtime pay to 56 hours per week from 48 starting on Jan. 1, 2027.

Legislation passed in 2021 that went into effect last year had set the overtime threshold at 48 hours for most workers who are classified as highly seasonal. During peak weeks of work that threshold can go up to 56 hours for some small growers. Workers must be paid time and a half over that threshold. 

Senate Bill 121 squeaked by on a vote of 33-32 after some of the most contentious debates on the House Floor this session centered on worker protections and help for struggling farmers. The bill is currently on Gov. Jared Polis’ desk awaiting his signature.

Four upstream states in the Colorado River Basin, including Colorado, agreed to release up to 325 billion gallons of water out of a Wyoming reservoir to help one of the basin’s most important water supplies, Lake Powell. 

The lake’s water levels have fallen to historical lows after 20 years of prolonged drought, and this year’s record-poor snowpack is exacerbating an already tense situation. The Upper Basin states’ approval is the first step in finalizing the releases under a 2019 agreement to help the basin respond to extremely dry years. The Department of the Interior is expected to approve the plan this week after announcing the intended drought-response releases Friday.

But pulling from the Wyoming reservoir, Flaming Gorge, will have local impacts, the state’s officials said during an Upper Colorado River Commission meeting Tuesday. 

“Nobody’s incredibly anxious to do this,” Colorado’s Commissioner Becky Mitchell said before a vote.

“All in reluctant favor?” she said, followed by unanimous approval.

The releases could begin as soon as Thursday pending the Secretary of the Interior’s final approval, said Wayne Pullen, the Upper Colorado Basin regional director for the Bureau of Reclamation.

Basin states were still waiting for the expected federal approval as of Wednesday afternoon.

The mountains in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico provide most of the water that flows through the Colorado River Basin to support 40 million people and multibillion-dollar industries. 

This year, the Upper Colorado River Basin’s snowpack peaked around March 9, a month early, and has been declining rapidly, Chuck Cullom, UCRC executive director, said Tuesday.

The forecast flows into Lake Powell totaled 1.4 million acre-feet as of April. It was expected to drop to 900,000 acre-feet within the next month — which roughly equals the spring runoff into the immense reservoir in 2002, another extremely dry year, Cullom said.

One acre-foot equals about 325,800 gallons, or the water used by two to four households each year.

With the small inflows at Powell, officials are warning that water levels in the reservoir, located on the Utah-Arizona border, could fall below a critical elevation. 

At that point, low water levels could lead to damage in the dam’s internal infrastructure, like the pipes that lead to electricity generating turbines, or fall below the turbine intakes, which would halt power production altogether.

“It’s clear that additional actions at Lake Powell are necessary,” Cullom said.

But the decision comes with local impacts and basinwide drawbacks.

The upstream reservoirs, including Flaming Gorge on the Wyoming-Utah border, are small and the drought releases are a limited tool, Wyoming’s Commissioner Brandon Gebhart said. 

The drought releases won’t rescue the basin from an extended water crisis, he and other state and tribal officials said. 

It’s a short-term solution: Once released, the water can’t be relied upon year after year, officials said. It’s going to take time for these reservoirs to recover before the states can do this again.

Flaming Gorge was 46% full and 57 feet below capacity as of Tuesday.

The drought releases will have significant negative impacts on water resources, local economies, fisheries, local marinas and recreation in the Upper Basin, Gebhart said.

Colorado communities felt similar impacts in 2021 and 2022 when state and federal officials agreed to draw down Blue Mesa, a federal reservoir near Gunnison and the largest in Colorado, to support water levels at Lake Powell. 

Blue Mesa recovered its lost water, but with spring runoff so low, federal and state officials do not plan to tap Blue Mesa this year as part of the drought-response plan.

This year’s decision to release additional water in response to drought wasn’t made lightly, Gebhart said. 

“We wouldn’t be recommending this release, except for the historically dry conditions,” he said.

A rare fire weather warning has been issued by the National Weather Service, warning both rural and urban residents in south central and southeastern Colorado of 60-mph wind gusts and extremely dry conditions Wednesday that pose a “significant threat to life and property.”

Strong winds out of the southwest, between 25 and 35 mph, coupled with relative humidity levels in the single digits, prompted forecasters to warn of a “particularly dangerous situation” in the Upper Arkansas Valley, the San Luis Valley, the Wet Mountains and Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

The conditions are expected from 10 a.m. to midnight Wednesday, though the highest risk will be between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.

“In some cases, safe and timely evacuation may not be possible should a fire approach,” forecasters in Pueblo said. 

Critical fire weather conditions are forecast across much of southeastern Colorado on Wednesday, stretching from the New Mexico border to the south to the Kansas border to the east.

In the San Luis Valley, blowing dust could bring very low visibility at times, making travel difficult, and strong winds could blow down trees and power lines.

“Use caution if you must drive across the San Luis Valley on Wednesday,” forecasters warned. 

Xcel Energy said it will shut off power, starting at noon, to about 7,100 customers in Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla and Rio Grande counties to reduce the risk of wildfire. Customers can look up their address online to see if they may be impacted by the power shutoffs. 

According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, issued April 16, 97% of Colorado is in moderate to exceptional drought conditions, caused in part to record-high temperatures in March and historically low snowpack. 

Elevated fire danger could continue through Thursday, forecasters said.

Federal and state officials have proposed severe drought response actions, like drastically cutting water releases from Lake Powell, in face of a historically dry year and worsening conditions in the Colorado River Basin.

The Bureau of Reclamation announced Friday it will likely reduce Lake Powell water releases to 6 million acre-feet, the lowest amount in decades. It also intends to release additional water from Flaming Gorge, an upstream reservoir, to help elevate the water level in Lake Powell. The decisions could raise the specter of forced water cuts in states including Colorado, impact endangered fish populations and affect communities and economies.

Basin states, tribes and partners continue to provide feedback on the proposed releases. A final decision will be coming next week, Reclamation said Friday in a news release.

“Given the severity of the risks facing the Colorado River system, it is imperative that we take action quickly to protect a resource that supplies water to 40 million people and supports vital agricultural, hydropower production, tribal, wildlife, and recreational uses across the region,” Andrea Travnicek, Reclamation’s assistant secretary of water and science, said in the news release.

The Colorado River Basin, which stretches from Colorado’s mountains to the Pacific Ocean, saw about a quarter of its typical snowpack this year. The skimpy snowpack also shrank the amount of water flowing into the basin’s two major reservoirs, lakes Mead and Powell, the largest reservoirs in the nation. Lake Powell’s lower probable inflow is forecast to be just 2.78 million acre-feet — 29% of historical average and one of the lowest on record.

Powell held about a quarter of its storage capacity as of a Bureau of Reclamation presentation Friday. Mead held about a third of its capacity. The amount of water stored in federal reservoirs across the basin was just 36% as of Friday.

If the water level at Lake Powell falls too low, it can endanger critical infrastructure in the dam and stop hydroelectric power generation, which helps supply communities across the West with affordable, renewable energy. 

The immense reservoir’s water levels are projected to fall below these key points by August, according to a monthly federal forecast released Friday called the 24-month study.

Or it could be as early as June, the Upper Colorado River Commission said in a news release Friday. The commission is a joint body that includes the Upper Basin states, like Colorado, and is a deciding force in Upper Basin water policy.

In response, the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that operates Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell, has already held back about 598,000 acre-feet of water to try to maintain higher water levels in the reservoir. (One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to four urban households.)

That water was scheduled to flow to downstream communities in Arizona, California, Nevada and northern Mexico. The bureau still plans to release it before the water year ends Sept. 30, according to the April 24-month study. 

But that is not enough.

To elevate water levels in Lake Powell, Reclamation officials intend to release 660,000 to 1 million acre-feet of additional water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming border. The reservoir was 83% full as of Friday, and the releases over the next 12 months will reduce it to 59% of its capacity.

As of Friday, Reclamation did not plan to release water from two other upstream reservoirs — Blue Mesa, the largest reservoir in Colorado, and Navajo Reservoir on the Colorado-New Mexico border — because of their low water levels and poor forecast inflows.

The bureau also intends to release a total of 6 million acre-feet from Glen Canyon Dam this water year, which began Oct. 1 and will end Sept. 30.

For months, Reclamation has been planning to release a total of 7.48 million acre-feet from the dam. Since 2015, releases have ranged from about 7.08 million acre-feet in 2022 to 9.26 million acre-feet in 2019, according to a 2024 report from the Upper Colorado River Commission.

Reclamation only has limited authority to drop releases to 6 million acre-feet because of a near-term agreement developed in 2024 in response to the basin’s prolonged drought, shrinking flows, overuse and plummeting reservoir levels.

If the feds release 6 million acre-feet of water this year, it could open the door to legal arguments from Lower Basin states calling for upstream states to make forced water cuts.

Lawsuits — often dubbed the nuclear option — could mire the entire basin in years of legal uncertainty and expensive court battles while leaving the basin’s water future in the hands of U.S. Supreme Court justices instead of local and state water managers.

Responses around the basin

Politicians, water officials, environmental groups and other water users are voicing widespread concerns about conditions in the basin. 

The shrunken releases from Lake Powell will accelerate declining water levels in Lake Mead, potentially reducing Hoover Dam’s hydropower generating capacity by 40% as early as this fall, Reclamation’s announcement said.

At upstream reservoirs, boating access may be reduced earlier in the season than normal. In the Grand Canyon, lower flow rates will affect rafting conditions, and fishing may be more challenging. At Lake Mead National Recreation Area, reduced water levels may further limit boating access, the bureau said.

In Colorado, cities and water utilities are calling for residents with lawns and gardens to make voluntary water cutbacks. In some cases, they are implementing drought restrictions.

Some environmental advocacy groups, including Western Resource Advocates, are pushing Reclamation to time releases to mimic natural conditions to benefit native and endangered fish and other aquatic species if they have to make releases from upstream reservoirs. 

There are endangered fish in the Green River below Flaming Gorge that could benefit if the drought response releases replicate the natural surge of water during spring runoff.

“The water is going to Powell regardless, so let’s do it in a way that actually provides some benefit along the way,” said John Berggren, WRA’s regional policy manager for the healthy rivers department.

In a joint statement earlier this month, governors from the four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — said their states are actively cutting off water users, like farmers and ranchers.

“This is an unprecedented year on the Colorado River, and likely will be one of the worst on record,” governors from four upstream states, including Colorado, said in a news release this month. “A dry year like this reminds us of why it is critical that all who rely on this resource learn to live within its means and adapt our uses accordingly.”

In early April, the governors spoke in favor of releasing water from Flaming Gorge or other upstream reservoirs, as long as the releases comply with existing agreements and reservoirs eventually recover the water they lost because of the drought release.

“We must have a clear understanding of how these proposed releases will effectively protect elevations at Lake Powell,” the governors said. “Once the releases conclude, we expect that all water released from Flaming Gorge and other upstream reservoirs will be fully recovered.”

This year’s water challenges come at a time of transition, Reclamation said. The existing agreements that guided Colorado River reservoir operations for 20 years are set to expire this year. 

The seven basin states have not reached consensus on a new operating framework, the bureau said. 

Without that agreement, the Interior Department, which oversees the bureau, “will be prepared to determine operations for post-2026 later this summer to provide certainty and stability for the Colorado River Basin,” Reclamation said.

The first time Toni Fernandez got high off opioids, the pills were stolen from a little orange bottle in a friend’s parent’s medicine cabinet. She was in the seventh grade, growing up in Alamosa, the region of Colorado flooded with the most prescription opioids during the height of the opioid epidemic.

“One of the kids in our school, I guess his dad was prescribed large amounts of narcotics,” Fernandez said. “And he would just bring them and share them with us.”

Alamosa, in the high-desert basin of the San Luis Valley, was flooded with more than 17 million prescription pain pills between 2006 and 2019, equating to 77 pills per resident per year. Two worlds coexist in the quaint rural town. In one, children play in the park next to the Rio Grande while neighbors wave hello to each other along Main Street. In the other, a mass dumping of opioids has led to life-altering addictions that have broken families, devastated bank accounts and left some without homes.

Fernandez found herself living in the latter world. At 21 years old, she was prescribed Percocet and Valium for a back injury. Once the pain resolved, she continued to chase the euphoric high the pills brought her.

“Living the fast life, doing drugs, selling drugs, all the things — that was just the culture,” Fernandez said. 

From there, Fernandez struggled through years of addiction, moving to meth and heroin when pills sold on the street got too expensive.

In 2020, Fernandez sought medical treatment for her addiction, accessing Medicaid, the federal government’s health insurance program for the poor and disabled, to pay for drug treatment that played a central role in her journey of recovery.

“For the first two and a half years of my recovery, I was using a Vivitrol shot, which was like a godsend,” she said, referring to a prescription drug used to treat addiction by blocking opioid receptors and reducing cravings.

But these days, the passage of Medicaid cuts under the Trump administration may make the treatments that helped turn Fernandez’s life around inaccessible to the many still struggling in Alamosa and throughout the valley. Under new work requirements and federal funding cuts, those in need of costly treatments for their addictions may face insurmountable financial barriers.

Without insurance, treatments that help curb withdrawal symptoms like Vivitrol cost around $1,000 to $1,500 per monthly injection. Suboxone, a similar treatment, costs between $150 and $500 for a 30-day supply. For someone in Fernandez’s situation, accessing these treatments without any form of insurance is nearly impossible.

“We have some of the poorest counties in Colorado, and then you add that substance use disorder on top of it (and) the lack of being able to work,” said Melissa Dominguez, a nurse and lifelong resident of the valley. She is a member of the Colorado Opioid Abatement Council who spends her time connecting people struggling with substance use disorder to recovery resources.

“It’s just not really attainable for them to be able to go to the pharmacy and pick up their script and pay a couple hundred dollars every week, or even once a month,” Dominguez said. 

Cutting holes in the safety net

The budget reconciliation bill, passed in July 2025, cuts federal funding for Medicaid by 15% over the course of 10 years. Additionally, new Medicaid provisions planned for 2027 will require nondisabled adults under the age of 65 who are childless or the parents of older teenagers to prove that they are working, volunteering or attending school for at least 80 hours a month.

 While people with substance use disorder are explicitly excluded from the work requirements, there are no written guidelines within the provisions that define how individuals can prove their exemption. 

According to Deborah Steinberg, a senior health policy attorney at the nonprofit Legal Action Center, these cuts will have dramatic consequences for substance use disorder treatment.

“We know that any cuts, whether it’s to eligibility categories or to benefits, are just going to make treatment less affordable and less accessible,” Steinberg said. “For a lot of providers, Medicaid is also their largest revenue source so it means that some providers might close.”

There is also no standardized way states will implement the exemptions or define substance use disorder, Steinberg added. She worries that many people who would qualify for an exemption for their substance use disorder could fall through the cracks and lose coverage without a formal diagnosis.

“We’re going to miss a lot of folks,” Steinberg said. “I fear these exemptions are just not going to be enough to actually protect people as they were theoretically intended.”

The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing estimated that the implementation of these work requirements would affect 375,000 Coloradans.

And while crackdowns by the Drug Enforcement Administration have reduced opioid prescriptions, street drugs like heroin and fentanyl are becoming new vices for people formerly dependent on their doctor-approved medications. Dominguez said many of her patients were first prescribed opioids for pain then were abruptly cut off, prompting them to move on to illicit drugs. 

When her prescriptions ran out, Fernandez felt she needed to fill the void. She stopped showing up to her job as a certified nursing assistant and began working different jobs — often waitressing — to earn quick money. In 2013 she began using heroin and, that same year, became pregnant with her youngest son. From there, Fernandez was in and out of jail, stealing to support her addiction. 

“People think of being a mom and being an addict, that we love the drug more than we love our kids, which is never the case,” Fernandez said. “It’s just all the trauma that’s surrounded our circumstances that keeps us there and we just don’t see a way out.”

As a high schooler, Fernandez had a 4.0 GPA and received multiple acceptance letters from universities. But, she said, substance abuse was normalized by her parents throughout her youth. When she was 17 years old, her father, who struggled with a dependency to alcohol and cocaine, died by suicide. Addiction was always in close proximity, so Fernandez followed the paths carved out by the generations before her.

“I call it valley-minded because we just don’t see outside of it,” Fernandez said. “I had never had anybody in my life show me that there was something bigger than what was here.”

Judy McNeilsmith, the director of operations and program services at La Puente, a nonprofit organization in Alamosa, said that it’s difficult to break habits and escape social groups that encourage substance abuse in the small, rural communities sprawled across the valley.

“You can’t live in a rural area without going to the grocery store and seeing somebody you know so it’s really hard to break those patterns,” McNeilsmith said.

Stopping a destructive cycle

At La Puente’s homeless shelter, on a quiet Saturday afternoon, employees serve bolognese pasta, mashed potatoes and bread. People eat their meals by a box full of Narcan, a nasal spray used to reverse opioid overdose, that is free to take. Many of the people at the shelter, McNeilsmith said, have struggled or are actively struggling with substance use disorder. She said that some people lost their homes after struggling with addiction, while others have stories that reverse that order.

“It’s kind of like the chicken and the egg,” McNeilsmith said. “Poverty begets crisis and crisis — you do what you can do to get money.”

By 2020, Fernandez had enough. She was in jail for drug charges and her kids were nearing the age she was when she tried her first prescription pill. The fear that they might repeat the same cycle that was drowning her was mortifying.

“I know how old I was when I started experimenting, so that kind of hit hard,” Fernandez said. “I just totally started rebuilding my life.”

Once she was released, Fernandez began her journey in sober living and, with Dominguez’s guidance, accessed the medication-assisted treatment that helped lift her from where she’d been stuck. She received Vivitrol shots for the first two and a half years of her recovery.

“It just took away the cravings and the thoughts. I didn’t like the smell of barbecue sauce, vinegar — any of that stuff — because it smelled like the heroin. And when I was taking the Vivitrol, that just wasn’t there,” Fernandez said.

Fernandez accessed these treatments through Medicaid. Without it, she said, she likely would not have been able to receive them and doesn’t know what her alternative treatment paths could have been. She actively works as a recovery coach for Hard Beauty, a nonprofit organization that offers peer support to those struggling with or recovering from addiction. Her clients, Fernandez said, also rely on Medicaid to pay for her coaching services.

McNeilsmith worries that Medicaid cuts will decimate the health care services for those in recovery across the valley. Approximately two in five residents in Alamosa County rely on Medicaid, and, for hospitals and treatment centers in the region, Medicaid makes up a significant portion of the payments they receive. If people lose their Medicaid coverage, these institutions will not get that money. McNeilsmith worries that with some residents losing their Medicaid, local hospitals could face devastating financial strain and be forced to close.

“We are a high-poverty area and adding those additional requirements is going to really impact the safety net and have folks with no resources,” McNeilsmith said.

New hope in the valley

One of these resources is a new detox and rehabilitation center that just celebrated its first anniversary in July.

The center opened with some help from the projected $880 million in opioid settlement funds paid by pharmaceutical companies to the state of Colorado following lawsuits over their role in the opioid crisis.

South of Main Street, nestled between railroad tracks and the Alamosa County Jail, is the aptly named Hope in the Valley. Its staff describes it as the only full-scale treatment center with withdrawal management in the San Luis Valley. Community members say it brought much-needed support to the area. The long one-story brick building is split: one side is a detox with a 10-person capacity and the other is a residential treatment program that houses up to 15 patients.

On the rehabilitation side, residents take part in a ceremony for two individuals who will soon be graduates of the program. David Herrera, the center’s community engagement coordinator, shares his favorite stories of the two residents as the room bursts into chuckles. Herrera expresses excitement that, with one of the graduates gone, he will now be the funniest person at Hope in the Valley again. The room joins hands in prayer for the two and wishes them well in their recovery journeys outside the brick walls.

Herrera himself struggled through addiction. In the backyard of the facility — which for now is just asphalt, a chicken coop, some chairs and a basketball court — Herrera says he wants to build a labyrinth for residents to walk through, a representation of the addiction and recovery process he found himself in. Herrera sought treatment for alcohol addiction in Estes Park and said that when he told his case manager he would be moving on to the valley, she expressed hesitation.

“She just said, ‘David I’m going to be honest with you. There’s not a lot of resources down in the valley,’” Herrera said. “This was only two and a half years ago.”

At that time, Herrera said, there were only about four Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week in Alamosa. But now there are daily recovery meetings hosted by Hope in the Valley that are open to the public. According to Herrera, this shift has been needed.

“The psychological defeat from the opioids has been devastating to our community. You have people that have lost family members to this addiction — moms and uncles and dads and the whole thing,” Herrera said. “And you hear it all the time, but it’s very real here.”

Fernandez, who helps lead peer support groups at Hope in the Valley, witnessed many of her acquaintances and loved ones from her youth, including her own brother, fall victim to addiction.

“A lot of us are not here anymore,” Fernandez said.

However, Fernandez and Herrera say, because of the opening of the center, there’s more local support for people struggling with addiction.

“The first time I went to treatment, I had to go to Pueblo,” Fernandez said. “And now this treatment center has built more of a community — which I love — for all of us, not just the people that have been here.”

This community is also reliant on Medicaid. Most residents, Herrera said, use Medicaid to access Hope in the Valley’s detox treatment, 30-day residential program, any necessary hospitalizations, intensive outpatient treatment, telehealth services and medically-assisted treatment.

On a brisk Saturday in November, outside Milagros Coffee House, a focal point of downtown Alamosa, a small number of protesters gather, holding signs reading, “Medicaid protects your family” and “Unite and resist” as cars pass through the intersection.

McNeilsmith says, given the impact cuts in government benefits would have for many valley residents, the community has been protesting for health care access and rallying around food drives. This community-based activism and support is not well-recognized by the rest of the state, according to Dominguez.

“A lot of times I feel like up north they don’t see the community that we do have here,” Dominguez said. “Compared to Denver, compared to Greeley, we don’t have half of some of the resources that they have. But the resources we do have, we work really hard to connect with each other and get people connected to the resources that are going to be best for them.”

Fernandez is grateful for this community and with its backing, she’s been able to raise her kids in a healthier environment. Instead of experimenting with prescription drugs, they play basketball at the local recreation center. Still, many of the people and resources in this environment rely on Medicaid, and cuts could make the already precarious and difficult process of recovery more so.

“I think there would be people a lot worse off,” Fernandez said. “To cut somebody off their medication — people are just going to go full blown back into addiction.”