GRAND JUNCTION — In a Colorado Mesa University ballroom Tuesday, about 200 farmers, water professionals and community members watched as the Colorado River District staff flipped through graph after graph during a presentation. 

Each new slide had one fundamental message: Colorado and downstream states are heading into summer with epicly poor water conditions. 

“If there’s anything in your memory about a dry year that you’ve seen, a warm year that you’ve seen, 2026 is beyond all of that,” said Raquel Flinker, the district’s director of interstate and regional water resources.

Research groups, news organizations and water officials have been blaring warnings about the worst snowpack in history and water supply concerns heading into the summer. In some ways, conditions are so bad, the state is headed into uncharted territory, experts said. In the face of a worrisome year, farmers, reservoir operators and city utilities are focused on getting the best data possible. They’re turning to scientists and pilots with newfangled snowpack measurement methods — plus the tried-and-true measurement methods used since the early 1900s.

Their goal: Figure out how to use a scant water supply as effectively as possible.

“There’s not a lot of snow out there, nor has there been,” said Jeff Deems, co-founder and chief technical officer with Airborne Snow Observatories Inc. “We’ve had very little snow and it’s melting early.”

The ASO teams found themselves in a flurry of activity in March. The company, born out of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, takes to the skies and slopes each year to snag snow measurements using laser technology and staff members’ own two feet. 

Their flights provide a highly detailed and accurate snapshot of conditions in each watershed. Water managers use the ASO lidar maps (short for a remote sensing method called light detection and ranging) to complement federal data. In all, it gives reservoir operators, city water utilities and water officials a better idea of how much water is in the mountains — and what their summer water supply might be.

ASO did 18 flights in seven days across Colorado, from St. Vrain and Big Thompson watersheds in northern Colorado to the Rio Grande, Boulder Creek, Roaring Fork and Dolores watersheds in central and southern parts of the state. What they found was more grim data.

“It’s been pretty frantic,” Deems said.

Fine-tuning the data

Mountain snowpack is a vital water source for Coloradans and downstream communities in 19 states and Mexico. For decades, Colorado communities have relied on federal data provided by snow-telemetry stations, which often feature small sheds outfitted with scientific gear in remote parts of the mountains.

These measurement stations, called the SNOTEL network, provide continuous data and many stations have accrued decades of historical data.

The network has been around since the 1970s and is made up of over 900 stations in the West, 114 of which are in Colorado. Researchers have been taking widespread manual measurements since the early 1900s.

According to SNOTEL data, Colorado’s snowpack was at 24% of its 30-year norm as of Wednesday, the same date, April 8, that usually marks its peak each year. The snowpack for the roughly 250,000-square-mile Colorado River Basin was at about 25% of its norm, according to a Colorado Basin River Forecast Center update Tuesday morning — one day after the basin’s normal peak date, April 6.

But SNOTEL stations miss snow below 9,000 feet and above 12,000 feet. They are a point measurement: They don’t, and can’t, actually measure an entire basin.

ASO flights capture all elevations in a watershed, instead of just one point. In the past these flights have found more water in Colorado watersheds than appeared in SNOTEL data. But the flights only provide a snapshot of winter conditions, on a certain day at a certain time, instead of a continuous historical record.

This year, not so much. Some parts of watersheds are doing better or worse than indicated by the SNOTEL stations, Deems said. But by and large, the ASO data is lining up with SNOTEL measurements and federal river forecast centers.

“There is quite a lot less snow than we’re used to having. No surprise there,” he said. 

The ASO teams flew over the Blue River watershed near Silverthorne and Breckenridge. The terrain funnels water into the 65-mile waterway that eventually flows into the Colorado River, the lifeblood for communities, farms, environments and industries in much of the Southwest and parts of northern Mexico.

The Blue River also feeds Dillon Reservoir, an important water source for Denver Water, Colorado’s oldest water utility, and about 1.5 million people in the Denver area.

For most of the watershed, the snowpack on March 20 was about half what it was on April 11, 2025. 

But ASO also found variations in watersheds. Some areas are substantially worse than last year. Other parts are about the same as last year, he said. 

And knowing exactly where water is — and isn’t — can help reservoir managers and city planners use water more efficiently this summer.

“That’s not like a miracle save or anything,” Deems said. “But what that says is that there’s enough complexity out there that we need to measure it carefully so that those managers understand that there may be more water in parts of their watersheds than is suggested by one or two (SNOTEL) stations.”

Planning for a hot, dry summer

As snowpack melts, irrigation district managers in the Grand Valley, an area with some of the most secure, reliable and oldest water rights in the state, are trying to decide how to handle their water supply for the summer, some said at the Colorado River District gathering Tuesday.

Long-time peach growers in Palisade are keeping an eye on the skies as they aim for efficient water use. 

Everybody is trying to be very cautious, said Priscilla Walker, a Palisade resident whose family has owned peach orchards for decades. 

“Peaches don’t use the water as much as alfalfa and subdivisions,” she said. “Would you rather have the best peaches in the world or fountains, neon signs, swimming pools and Kentucky bluegrass lawns? That’s really the choice because we have no control over how much water falls.”

The next question for water managers is: How much will actually end up in reservoirs? 

Some of the snow simply turns directly into water vapor in a process called sublimation. Plants and soils suck up snowmelt as it passes through watersheds toward rivers. Some water can evaporate along the way.

“All of these factors affect what fraction of the snowpack we get as runoff,” Deems said. “Last year, one of the stories was that runoff efficiency was quite low. Given the hot, dry, windy weather that we’ve had, we might expect similarly very low runoff efficiencies this year.”

For a century, the Colorado River has been managed in pieces. Legally and politically, it’s divided into two basins, with each state and community focused on securing its respective water supply. But that is not how a river functions. The Colorado River is an interconnected system, sustained by Rocky Mountain snowpack, rainfall and groundwater.

It is fragile, and under increasing stress. Two and a half decades into this century, the river that built the modern West has 20% less water flowing through it than it did on average in the last century. As heat and drought intensify, so do the stakes: Failure to recognize the severity of changing conditions, managing the river in parts without considering needs of the whole and inadequate planning for long-term shortages put the future of all the basin at risk. 

For the last five years, I have documented how the Colorado River Basin’s farmers are navigating water shortages and uncertainty amid deep political divisions about the river’s future. This project, called American Adaptation, examines three agricultural communities whose survival is threatened by a shrinking river, examining what happens to people when policies and water management struggle to keep pace with a changing climate. 

In one of the river’s northern watersheds, the Ute Mountain Farm and Ranch Enterprise is adapting its management as the water it relies on becomes less dependable. In central Arizona, farmers have returned to well water after becoming the first communities to have their supply cut off completely due to the basin-wide shortage. And in California’s Imperial Valley, the farms that receive the river’s largest water allocation are under growing pressure to share the burden of shortage. 

Together, their stories illustrate the stakes — and rising tensions — of the  current negotiations over the river’s future management. States, tribal nations and the federal government are reckoning with 100 years of developing water infrastructure based on assumptions of continuing abundance and expansion. These ideas — and the legal frameworks built around them — are colliding with the reality of a river with much less water than expected, raising complex questions about what the Colorado can sustain, how its water should be used and who will shoulder the necessary cuts.

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On 7,600 acres painstakingly carved out of desert brush, the Ute Mountain Farm and Ranch, a tribally run enterprise of the Ute Mountain Ute nation, produces cattle, alfalfa, corn and wheat. Its operations are led by Simon Martinez, Eric Whyte and Michael Vicente, who have deep personal connections to the enterprise. Martinez helped build the dam for the reservoir that provides the farm’s water, while Whyte cleared desert brush and mapped where the fields would go. Vicente, as the lead irrigator, can account for every drop of water that’s used.

In good years, the farm’s circular fields flourish in brilliant green bursts. But the past decade has brought increasingly erratic access to water. Each spring, the local irrigation district announces potential cuts after assessing snowpack runoff and the available water stored in nearby McPhee Reservoir. In 2021, the farm received just 10% of its water allocation and was forced to leave 6,000 acres unplanted. In 2022, 30% of the water came in, and last year, 34%, which the farm was able to increase to 50% after leasing shares from other water users.  

To survive, they adapted. Every year, the farm’s leadership creates numerous plans for different water scenarios. They have applied for grants, implemented low-flow nozzles in the irrigation system, installed small-scale hydropower generators. They joined a Land Institute pilot program to test crops that use less water. 

“We still haven’t thrown the towel in.”

“We still haven’t thrown the towel in,” said Simon Martinez. “Nobody ever thought, when the reservoir was built, that there wouldn’t be enough water to supply the farms that have been put out here. It’s not only us; it’s happening all through southwestern Colorado.”

Low-water years leave their mark. Brush and scrub quickly reclaim unplanted fields. Employees laid off during dry years are hard to replace. During consecutive years of heat and drought, farms that rely on the basin’s many smaller reservoirs become even more vulnerable. As the number of dry years grows, it is increasingly uncertain how much shortage the Ute Mountain Farm and Ranch Enterprise can sustain in the long term, despite the farmers’ determination to adapt.  

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When Water Disappears

 𖡡 Pinal County, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert

Hundreds of miles south, Will Clemens manages his uncle’s 2,100-acre farm, cultivating cotton, alfalfa and Bermuda grass. Farmers in this region operate with a year-round growing season punctuated by dust storms and summer monsoons. 

In this intense environment, wells were the only water source before Colorado River water became available. Until the 1980s, farmers drew their water from deep underground, contributing to fissures, land subsidence and drying wells. The completion of the Central Arizona Project alleviated the pressure, delivering farmers cheap imported river water that was classified as lower priority and the first to be cut during shortages. Deliveries continued until 2022, when low water levels at Lake Mead triggered federal cuts, and central Arizona farms lost access. In response, Clemens’ local irrigation district drilled a dozen new wells. 

“I’ve been asking myself, does America really need to be in the agriculture industry?”

Without the river, Clemens and his neighbors have seen the canals’ water drop. At times, their irrigation district will cut off water before a field is fully irrigated, or struggle to keep up with the farmers’ water orders. More pressure on groundwater raises questions about what is sustainable in the future. Large parts of Arizona have no legal limits on pumping water from the ground. Even areas with legally protected groundwater have failed to meet a safe yield goal set in the 1980s to balance groundwater taken each year with naturally replenished water by 2025.

Some central Arizona farmers are selling or leasing their farmland to solar developers, as water dwindles and energy demands grow. Miles up the road from where Clemens farms, sleek black grids of solar panels gleam next to green alfalfa. For years, Arnold Burruel, Clemens’ uncle, has been in talks with a solar developer about selling the land. 

“I’ve been asking myself: Does America really need to be in the agriculture industry?” Burruel said. “America is not totally enamored with agriculture when it comes to pesticides, herbicides, groundwater, GMOs — all of the above. We are at a crossroads. Are we going to continue to farm the way we are farming and heavily subsidize growers that can’t make ends meet? Society has to come up with an answer.”

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From above, the All American Canal forms a stark blue line, slicing through the Algodones Dunes. One of the world’s largest canals, it is fed by the Imperial Dam, which diverts up to 6.8 million gallons of water each minute from the Colorado River.

This is the only water source for 500,000 acres of Imperial Valley farmland. Farms here are protected by senior rights at low risk of cuts and receive regular releases from Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. During summer months, the sun looms over the valley’s dusty, flat horizon, and temperatures often climb above 100 degrees. Despite decades of drought and growing water shortage, water has flowed uninterrupted to the Imperial Valley. 

“I have a responsibility for the people who work here to make sure we survive.”

Fourth-generation family farmer Jack Vessey, who oversees a 10,000-acre produce operation, knows the canal system well. Growing up, he searched for places to swim on hot summer days.

“We take water seriously,” said Vessey, who added sprinkler systems, which are more efficient than flood irrigation. In recent years, the Imperial Irrigation District joined other communities throughout the basin in voluntarily cutting water through 2026 in exchange for federal funds. The district’s compensation was several hundred dollars more per acre-foot than other participants. But as funding set aside for Western water by the Biden administration is drawn down, it is unclear how much will be available to pay for future voluntary cuts.

Vessey is aware of the growing pressure on the river and the valley’s farms, but he emphasizes that the community has helped with shortages and is protective of its water.

“I have a responsibility for the people who work here to make sure we survive,” he said. “I have to be a little selfish at some point and say, ‘Keep giving us the water we need.’ I know we’ve got to do our part, but I can look in the mirror and say we are not wasting water, we are growing food people need. 

“If it wasn’t for that canal coming off the Colorado River, this would just turn to desert.”  

This project was supported by the National Geographic Society’s World Freshwater Initiative.

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 March 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “The Shrinking River.”  

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Since the Confluence Early Childhood Development Service District was established last November by way of ballot measure 7A, the district’s newly elected Board of Directors has been busy laying the groundwork for a strong start to represent a diverse community.

“It’s a really exciting time to be involved in local government,” said Carolynne “Carly” Kraemer, board chair and Seat 4 representative. “On a national level people are becoming more involved and the voices that haven’t been historically represented or heard are showing up. This is a great time because that will carry forward and show up here.” 

Proposed by the nonprofit Confluence Early Childhood Education Coalition (CECE) and approved by 60% of regional voters, the special tax district will expand and improve access and affordability for early childhood care and education by leveraging funds from a 0.25% sales and use tax. Spanning the Parachute to Aspen corridor, the district is a government entity, separate from CECE, and will coordinate efforts between county, municipal and school district boundaries to maximize impact.

That same ballot, regional voters also elected five directors. Together they will oversee implementation of the district’s service plan, manage funding — including grant and tuition assistance allocation — expand existing programs and strengthen support for families. 

Larimer County is the only other Colorado region that has approved a similar initiative. Ultimately, the board is operating with extra intention while navigating new terrain.

“The [district’s] service plan has some very specific parameters, but the implementation piece is very broad. We want to make sure we’re very intentional with what that piece looks like,” said Kraemer. “Before we figure out where and how we want to go, we have to get our board really strong.”

In addition to Kraemer, the current board includes Seat 1 representative Amy Shipley (also director of Basalt Library), Seat 2 representative Paul Stanley (Garfield County Libraries’ Youth Services Coordinator), Seat 3 representative Adley Larimer (a former coach with Early Childhood Network) and Seat 5 representative Stefan Reveal (a loan officer at Alpine Bank and co-chair of the Kids First Advisory Board). 

“We come from all these different backgrounds and it’s so great we have different strengths to bring,” said Kraemer, who serves on the Basalt Elementary School Accountability Committee and is a former board member of Growing Years preschool. “We’re working hard to make sure we have a foundational understanding of everything.” 

Since early December, the board has focused on preliminary work such as developing administrative structures, systems of governance and oversight, drafting and approving the budget and continuing to gather community feedback. The board also appointed Glenwood Springs-based law firm Karp Neu Hanlon for legal counsel.

As a volunteer board that must operate with complete public transparency, Kraemer recognized that progress seems slow right now; but with a strong foundation the district can operate more effectively. Notably, anticipated funds are arriving into the district earlier than expected — March rather than June. However, because the systems are still being finalized, a timeline for distribution has yet to be confirmed. Kraemer did confirm that this year’s funds will only be allocated for early childhood education capacity and quality grants to address the lack of spots. Tuition subsidies for families will begin next year.

“There’s an urgency, but we need thoughtful execution,” said Kraemer. “We need to go slow to then go fast. I’d rather be thoughtful about a system than to hurry up and create one for the sake of execution and then have to backpedal.”

To assist with building the district’s programmatic infrastructure, the board recently selected Kathryn Kuhlenberg to serve as the interim executive director. Subject to final board approval on March 12, Kuhlenberg will help the board “maintain momentum, stabilize operations and build core infrastructure during the district’s initial formation.” This transitional independent contractor role is expected to begin in early 2026 and bridge a six to 12-month period before a permanent executive director is appointed. 

“It’s not a permanent position, but it’s foundational and really important. We need to capture the public’s priorities from the get-go,” said Kraemer. 

Moving forward, Kraemer emphasized the need to continue encouraging community collaboration.

“I hope that we lay a really strong foundation for operations that are centered on systems and the person — data-driven and also honoring the individual experience,” said Kraemer. “It’s our responsibility to keep the public’s interests centered; and not just the public’s interests, but the children and the families … Every person in this valley is part of the fabric of our community … When we help everyone we are strengthening that fabric.”

Regular board meetings occur the second Thursday of each month at 9:30am at Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs. Visit www.confluencedistrict.org or email general@confluencedistrict.org for more information.

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A state Senate committee killed a bill that would have required farmers to get a third-party “prescription” before planting more of the now-ubiquitous crop seeds coated with pesticides, with even some Democrats saying the green effort went too far, too fast. 

Despite support from Gov. Jared Polis, the environmental groups and Democratic legislators trying to cut use of pesticide-protected seeds in Colorado agriculture lost out to arguments that farmers rely on the neonicotinoids or “neonics” to protect millions of acres of corn, wheat and other crops. Farm groups also won support saying individualized third-party audits were an expensive bureaucracy in an agricultural economy with leaf-thin profit margins. 

Two Democrats joined three Republicans on the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee to stop Senate Bill 65 — labeled the SEED Act — late Thursday after hours of testimony, with only Democrats Katie Wallace and Cathy Kipp voting to advance it. Supporters had argued that runoff from neonic-coated seeds was hurting important environmental pollinators like honey bees, and collecting in waterways for as-yet unknown impacts on humans down the road. 

“I’m disappointed to see this outcome,” said Wallace, a cosponsor. “This bill was a new approach to a long-term, pressing issue that protected farmer choice, ensured access to untreated seed, and eliminated the unnecessary uses responsible for neonic contamination.” 

Supporters had also argued there was no evidence that pesticide-coated seeds increase yields for many farmers, and that the seeds are often used in places that don’t have significant pest problems. 

“Pollinators are in trouble, and this loophole allows a major source of toxic pollution to enter our environment,” said Henry Stiles, Environment Colorado wildlife and conservation advocate. “We are disappointed in this result, but appreciate all the farmers, doctors and scientists who spoke in favor of the bill. Since senators expressed concerns about the impact of limiting these seeds, we will continue to demonstrate the need to save pollinators and show that there are safer, better options for farmers across the state.”

The Colorado Farm Bureau, among others, said the rejected bill “would have banned our farmers’ most effective, efficient, safe and affordable” way to manage costly pests.

“The Senate Agriculture Committee heard loud and clear from producers, agronomists, seed scientists, and a wide coalition from across the state that this burdensome regulation was unworkable, unreasonable, and unfounded,” said Farm Bureau director of state affairs Brandon Melnikoff. “Lawmakers recognized that removing this science-backed, proven pest management strategy would increase input costs while threatening the sustainability of our working lands.”

GRAND JUNCTION — On a sunny late-winter morning, the Las Colonias riverfront development is, surprisingly, bustling. 

City workers wrangle loose tumbleweeds along the development’s winding streets. Walkers and their dogs amble and sniff around a pond shaped like a butterfly. Campers in vintage Airstream trailers on the outskirts of the development pump up bike tires to get ready for a chilly spin on the trail along the Colorado River. Vehicles nose into parking spaces outside a pot shop and a hair salon. 

This is all that city leaders and business visionaries envisioned two decades ago when they began dreaming up the $30 million business-park makeover of this once-blighted and mostly deserted section of riverfront property south of Grand Junction’s downtown. 

Or, nearly all. 

The promise of a city replacing 128 acres of radioactive dumping grounds and a historic migrant farmworker neighborhood with outdoor-related development and recreation has not waned. But it has morphed as visions smacked into a pandemic and new economic realities. Build-out at Las Colonias has gone slower than anticipated. The area is not yet approaching dreams of a Western Slope  LoDo.

Since the city broke ground on the business part of Las Colonias, development of the area slumped and opened to a wider range of commercial enterprises, not only the recreation-oriented. 

“It’s all part of the evolution,” said Sarah Schraeder, who, along with her husband Thaddeus Schraeder, helped to convince the City of Grand Junction its abandoned riverfront should not be wasted. 

Empty building, unused zipline 

Las Colonias officially broke ground on infrastructure in 2018 after the decontaminated land given to the city by the U.S. Department of Energy had sat empty for decades. The next year, RockyMounts, a maker of bike racks, created a stir of optimism when it moved its headquarters to Grand Junction from Boulder.

RockyMounts was heralded as proof that recreation-related enterprises would find the parklike setting a solid draw.

But RockyMounts moved its distribution and warehouse operations to Utah after a year of operation. A lack of container rail shipping to and from Grand Junction proved to be a surprise snag. RockyMounts sold its manufacturing operation to an Australia-based company late in 2024 and left Grand Junction for Aurora. A large “For Sale” sign is now posted outside the empty 20,000-square-foot building.  

Nearby, a much heralded zipline stretches unused over the Colorado River. It was planned to be a eye-catching component of the recreation aspect of Las Colonias. But it closed in 2024 during its first full year of business due to “operational losses” and has now become a sort of Las Colonias albatross because of its high visibility.

When it had opened in the late summer of 2023 after two years of delays, there was no stampede of zipliners. It turned out there wasn’t a big market for a $22 zip from a tower on the north side of the river to a bluff on the south.  

The line was built by Bonsai Designs, the Schraeders’ aerial adventure company, which was the first business to plant a survey flag in the newly graded dirt of Las Colonias. 

Bonsai is still designing ziplines and aerial courses for worldwide markets from its Las  Colonias headquarters, but its closed zipline has generated local grumbling about the wisdom of city handouts. 

The city had handed Bonsai a million dollars to boost the $3.2 million Bonsai spent on its flagship building. In exchange for the financial help, Bonsai agreed to fund, build and operate the zipline. The agreement specified the city could take the line over if Bonsai failed to operate it. 

“We did way more than we were supposed to do, but we lost $100,000 each year of our two years of operation,” Thaddeus Schraeder said.

The city doesn’t appear to be in a rush to own a municipal zipline. City officials say Bonsai is welcome to use the line for training and research. They say Bonsai has met its other obligations, including job creation and maintaining its headquarters at Las Colonias. 

Other businesses are filling extra space

Bonsai was built with extra commercial space that now houses businesses out of the mold of the recreation-related enterprises envisioned in the early days of Las Colonias.  An accounting firm, an engineer, a realty company, and a construction business populate glass-walled offices overlooking the butterfly-shaped pond.  

The Schraeders say the outdoors-oriented aspect of Las Colonias is still a strong draw to the area, even if some of the businesses moving in are not focused on recreation. She said workers value the option of heading directly out to trails or to the city-built boat launch that has attracted a nearby kiosk renting watercraft.

To the west of Bonsai, a “Come See Us, We’re Open” banner flaps outside the shining glass walls of the new 12,000-square-foot OakStar Bank. 

A financial institution looming over the trails, a dog park and a river play area was also not what city leaders envisioned in the early days of Las Colonias. But they now say it fits because a third of its space is open for other commercial tenants such as a restaurant, a coffee shop, a yoga studio, or a winery — all wish-list amenities dating to the beginning of Las Colonias.

Trent Prall, the Grand Junction engineering and transportation director who has been instrumental in the development of Las Colonias since the beginning, said the swerve in some of the focus is not concerning. He said the city is simply broadening its horizons as it shapes a vibrant new area in the Western Slope’s largest city. 

“We have gotten more engagement with the river,” Prall said. “That is what we planned for.” 

Curtis Englehart agrees. Englehart took over as executive director of the Grand Junction Economic Development Partnership in 2022 after Las Colonias had already taken shape and after voters had OK’d the elimination of a stumbling block by extending riverfront land leases to 99 years from 25. 

“The Riverfront at Las Colonias is working really well,” Englehart said. “I think we’re definitely moving in the right direction.” 

Mike Bennett took over as Grand Junction city manager in 2024, and is also an advocate for where Las Colonias is headed. He said inquiries about the seven shovel-ready building sites at Las Colonias have been picking up this year.

“I don’t know who wouldn’t want to be there,” Bennett said. 

City dwellers have demonstrated that has some truth to it. 

More than 150 apartment and condo units have sprung up around the development. Hundreds more are planned or already under construction on what used to be a sawmill property, a sugar beet plant, and a trucking company on the north and east sides of Las Colonias.

Gap between Main Street and the river is narrowing

Edgewater Brewery, the first business to take a public-attracting chance on the riverfront in 2000, sold last year. The new owner, WestCo Brewing, has continued as an eating and drinking establishment within hollering distance of the $3.8 million,5,000-seat (in the grass) Las Colonias amphitheater. Known as the Amp, the venue has grown into a steady attraction where Bob Dylan, Snoop Dogg and Ringo Starr have performed for packed crowds.  

As city officials had hoped, businesses are also creeping from Grand Junction’s popular, art-displaying Main Street toward the riverfront along 7th Street. A martial arts studio, an old grain silo turned bungee thrill attraction, a new restaurant featuring platter-sized fried pork tenderloins, and a gym have sprung up along what was a gritty commercial and industrial area.

The city plans to revamp the corridor’s infrastructure to accommodate more development, Bennett said. He said it will include better transportation options on streets that have the challenge of crossing railroad tracks.

The concept of a “string of pearls” stretching from Las Colonias west towards Fruita is also taking shape with another city park area and a private development. 

The Dos Rios General Development District — 58 acres of mixed-use, residential,  commercial and retail use — has a very visible Starbucks. Nearby, the Confluence Center of Colorado opened its doors with office space for nonprofits, land- and water-related agencies, and a day care and preschool. 

Dos Rios is located on land that was even more blighted than Las Colonias. The riverside was previously a landfill strewn with 8,500 junked vehicles. A layer of radioactive tailings covered much of the junk. The city sold 15 acres of the cleared land to a Washington, D.C-based private developer, MR Properties. That company has built apartments and is offering land for a brewery, a wine bar, a food hall and event spaces.  

The adjacent city land has been used for creative park amenities, including a playground with an eye-catching fish-shaped wooden structure, a bike skills park, a splash pad and a beach.

Competition popped up in Montrose

Besides revamping its original concept for the riverfront, Grand Junction has had to vie for businesses with the Colorado Outdoors development along the Uncompahgre River in the city of Montrose.  

Englehart and Bennett said they would classify it as “complementing rather than  competing.” But the kinds of businesses that Las Colonias set its sights on, including Mayfly Outdoors, chose the Montrose riverfront rather than Grand Junction’s.  

The Montrose riverfront has also attracted a string of smaller businesses, including a distillery, a shop for anglers, a bike store, a yurt maker, a sauna workout studio, restaurants, a hot tub purveyor and a hotel. 

The promoters of Grand Junction’s riverfront say there is no jealousy directed toward Montrose. 

Thaddeus Schraeder said he views the multiple riverside developments in terms of “a rising tide lifting all the boats up.”

“This all shows that this is an up-and-coming part of the world. It lets people know that there is something going on over here,” he said. 

Englehart offered, “what’s good for Montrose is good for Montrose. What’s good for Grand Junction is good for Grand Junction. We have a few similarities but quite a few differences.” 

He said those differences include Grand Junction’s location along Interstate 70 between Denver and Salt Lake City, a growing Colorado Mesa University, and a labor force of 80,000. 

Englehart said he sees strong interest in Las Colonias. Development eyes on the area have picked up after a stall during the COVID pandemic and a stuttering jump in inquiries in recent years. That is changing. He said he is currently talking with five “solid prospects.” He won’t say what they are, but he said they would all complement the new, expanded focus of Las Colonias. 

This story was co-published with Public Domain.

President Donald Trump’s controversial pick to head the Bureau of Land Management, Steve Pearce, offered contradictory explanations about his record of pushing for federal land sell-offs at his nomination hearing Wednesday.

Pearce, a longtime former Republican congressman from New Mexico, has faced broad backlash from environmental, conservation and hunting groups for his record of working to undermine public land protections and pushing land sales as a way to reduce the federal deficit. Faced with a volley of questions from critical senators on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Pearce refused to disavow that record, instead emphasizing that he would have limited power to do so as head of BLM.

“I’m not so sure that I’ve changed,” Pearce said when pressed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) about his public land record.

“I do not believe that we’re going to go out and wholesale land from the federal government,” Pearce added, noting that “federal law says that we can’t do that from the BLM itself.”

Pearce spent the hearing reiterating some variation of that assurance. Asked about national monuments, Pearce said designating them is a job for the White House. Asked whether he supported selling major swaths of federal land, Pearce said that question was better directed to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Several senators noted that they had heard repeatedly from constituents concerned about Pearce’s record of pushing to sell public land — including a widely circulated comment in a letter urging former House Speaker John Boehner to sell public lands to reduce the federal deficit that Pearce co-signed. The letter said that “over 90% of [federal public] land is located in the Western states and most of it we do not even need.”

“Idahoans do not want their public lands sold, period, full stop,” Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) told Pearce.

Selling federal public land remains unpopular in the West, where much of the nation’s holdings are concentrated. Some 76% of respondents opposed selling public land for housing, according to a Colorado College poll of Western state residents released earlier this month, and 74% opposed selling public land for oil, gas or mining development.

The lion’s share of the criticism on Wednesday came from Democratic members of the committee, although it was tempered compared to the backlash from public land advocates in recent weeks.

“[Pearce] called for the selling off of public lands,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) said in his opening statement. “That makes it challenging for me to view his potential tenure at the BLM as one of stewardship.”

“[Pearce] called for the selling off of public lands. That makes it challenging for me to view his potential tenure at the BLM as one of stewardship.”

Pearce faced surprisingly little questioning about anything else. No one pressed him about his ties to the fossil fuel industry or potential conflicts of interest.

As Public Domain previously reported, the former head of the New Mexico State Republican Party built his wealth in the oil-and-gas sector. He owns an oilfield services company called Trinity Industries, which he plans to turn control of over to his wife, as well as an interest in several oil leases in the Permian Basin, and sizable investments in fossil fuel and energy companies. If confirmed, he would have  to divest many of those assets.

Pearce also took in more than $2 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas lobby when running for his congressional seat. As head of BLM, Pearce would oversee the agency’s oil and gas leasing.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Pearce extolled the value of public land access several times, noting that he grew up near chunks of Forest Service land where his family vacationed,and he recalled fond memories of spending time on federal public land outside Tucson, Arizona, with his granddaughter.

“When I got back from Vietnam I experienced the healing serenity of backpacking wilderness areas,” Pearce said.

Sen. Angus King (D-Maine) asked whether Pearce thought Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s directive requiring his personal sign off for renewable energy projects on public lands to move forward stood on firm legal ground, Pearce said he wasn’t familiar enough with the policy to weigh in.

“Based solely on his feigned ignorance of energy policy, Steve Pearce is unqualified to lead the Bureau of Land Management,” Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of the Colorado-based Center for Western Priorities wrote in a statement. “His ethics forms are woefully inadequate and leave room for massive conflicts of interest if he is confirmed.”

Decades of public-lands planning, overturned in a day

Pearce was not Trump’s first choice to lead the BLM, a job that is responsible for overseeing nearly 250 million acres of federal land. Kathleen Sgamma, a longtime oil and gas lobbyist, abruptly withdrew her nomination hours before her confirmation hearing in April after a watchdog group surfaced a private memo in which Sgamma condemned Trump’s role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Unlike Sgamma, Pearce has remained a steadfast supporter of Trump and defended him in the wake of Jan. 6 against assertions that he incited violence. In a now-deleted post to Twitter a few days after the rioting, Pearce wrote that Trump “will be our President FOREVER and no one can take that away from us.”

The committee adjourned the hearing without voting on Pearce’s nomination.

The post Trump’s BLM nominee waffles on public land sell-off stance appeared first on High Country News.

Colorado will try to claw back $600 million in Trump-canceled clean energy grants in a new lawsuit, joining California and other states claiming cancellation of the funds violates both constitutional separation of powers and bans on political retribution. 

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said at a new conference Wednesday that Congress had already appropriated and directed federal agencies to spend the major research grants, including $300 million to Colorado State University to better control oil well methane leaks that contribute to climate change. Other lost Colorado grants include a $32 million carbon capture and sequestration hub project at Pueblo by the Colorado School of Mines, and $8 million in University of Colorado research into more efficient solar energy, Weiser said. 

When CSU representatives asked federal Energy Department officials why the grants were canceled, they were not given a reason, Weiser said. It’s the definition of unlawful “arbitrary and capricious” decisions to keep funding red-state research, yet deny the same funding to blue states just because of how its citizens voted, Weiser said. 

The Trump administration has attacked Biden-era clean energy research and development as “the green scam,” Weiser noted.

“The only scam here is that the administration is acting in such a lawless way,” Weiser said, during an online news conference with California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Colorado, California and Washington are the leading AG offices in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. They are joined by other blue-voting states that lost energy grants including Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. 

Trump signaled his assault on the “green new scam” immediately on taking office in 2025, Weiser’s office said. That was the beginning of “the administration’s illegal objective of eliminating energy and infrastructure programs created under Congress’s authority in laws such as the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act,” the office said.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought turned up the heat with a message on the social media platform X in September, during the budget shutdown, going after “the Left’s climate agenda,” Weiser’s office said, in a timeline accompanying the lawsuit. “The post listed 16 Democratically led states where projects would be defunded. The department officially announced the cuts the next day,” the timeline said. 

Joining Wednesday’s action was the 54th lawsuit against the Trump administration that Weiser’s office has either led or joined, Weiser said. The “return on investment” from the lawsuits is already astronomical, Weiser and Bonta said. Colorado added $600,000 to the AG’s budget to pursue federal lawsuits to claw back crucial funds, Weiser said, resulting in over $1 billion in restored or protected Colorado funding. 

“This executive branch seems to think they have the power of the purse, that they get to decide what’s funded. That’s not how our constitution works,” Weiser said Wednesday. “This administration might start asking before they take action, is this legal, but if they won’t, we’re going to court, and we’re winning again and again and again.”

Colorado is committed to a clean energy future, Weiser said, and the projects that Trump is trying to defund are exactly “what we need to do,” he said.