The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Drought conditions, El Nino also top of mind
by Katherine Nettles
The Gunnison Basin’s continuing drought has been the subject of several topics during updates to Gunnison County commissioners and Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District (UGRWCD) staff in the past month.
While drought conditions remain across the Upper Gunnison Basin, fire danger has decreased with recent precipitation and stage 2 fire restrictions have been downgraded to stage 1 allowing campfires in designated areas across the county. UGRWCD staff also weighed in on recent federal recommendations to address the water management stalemate between Colorado River Basin states over the next few years, and the local Aspinall Unit staff weighed in last week on what an El Nino Southern Oscillation might mean for the Gunnison Valley.
Drought conditions and El Nino prospects
UGRWCD senior water specialist Beverly Richards shared the US drought monitor map showing that since her last update on June 2, 100% of Gunnison County has been in severe drought, and 22% has been in exceptional drought. “We have now seen exceptional drought conditions since March 31 of this year,” she said, noting that also occurred in late August of 2025.
According to the US Drought monitor, there has been one to two class degradation in soil and stream conditions since early June in eastern and southern portions of Gunnison County. The area had seen 10% of average precipitation through August 6, and as of August 22 that had increased (for the past 30–60-day range) to 25% and above. Precipitation of the past two weeks has brought between .01 and .5 inches of precipitation and overall conditions (temperatures, precipitation, soil conditions and emergency response availability) have nudged the fire danger severity down enough for the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office to scale back fire restrictions from stage 2 to stage 1 on Friday, August 21.
Temperatures ranged from two to eight degrees above normal in August, and Richards said that the potential for significant wildland fires across western Colorado normally decreases for the month of September.
The Bureau of Reclamation shared a report with the Crested Butte News last week from the Aspinall Unit August 27 meeting, which included a presentation on El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The presentation, from Gunnison Basin forecaster Cody Moser with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), suggested that while there is a “greater than 90% chance of a very strong El Nino during fall and winter,” ENSO signal “is not significantly correlated with precipitation/flow in the Upper Colorado River Basin” and rather it favors increased chances for above-normal precipitation across southern Arizona and New Mexico. Moser stated that past strong El Nino events showed below normal temperatures to be more likely than above normal precipitation, “But nothing is guaranteed.”
UGRWCD general manager Sonja Chavez and general counsel John McClow also gave county commissioners an update in late-August on their initial assessment of the US Department of Interior’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) released in early August regarding the Colorado River Basin water management. Both noted that the document, which includes a draft of operating guidelines, is thousands of pages long, and not the lightest reading material.
They provided a summary of the post-2026 operating guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, explaining that the final EIS sets a 10-year framework for operations with key thresholds and ranges for operation elements and renegotiations every two years. Operations details at both reservoirs will be determined through a series of guidelines and last two years. The EIS also preserves the opportunity for future consensus agreements and for the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) to operate without consensus. However, the EIS does not contain guidelines for the next two years.
“It sounds like there’s some parallel processes happening,” said commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels. “So the BOR has a draft [for operational guidelines] but if the seven states can agree the BOR is amenable to replacing their draft with the one from the seven states. And if they don’t, their draft is the 2007 guidelines with a few minor tweaks.”
McClow added that the EIS used water modeling to decide what various reservoir release targets would be. “The whole system is structured around leaving an elevation in Lake Powell of 3,510 feet to keep it above power pool (which is 3,490 and allows hydropower production). That’s driving the whole process.”
He said the call for operations management to be renegotiated between states or through the DOI every two years was very difficult.
“The idea that we’re going to have to renegotiate every two years means we’re going to be in a constant state of crisis, a constant state of negotiation, generally,” he said.
Chavez added that the EIS addressed water shortage allocations and she analyzed two categories of actions that would impact the Upper Basin and Colorado.
The first would be releases from the Flaming Gorge, Aspinall unit and Navajo reservoirs. The other would be the requirement for an upper basin conservation program conserving up to 200,000-acre feet of water.
McClow said the Water Conservation Board is trying to develop criteria for temporary, compensated water conservation. He said the program will hopefully launch this fall, and given that there is $100 million of federal funds, for this conservation, he said states need to set their own prices for water, rather than having it set by the BOR. “The value of conserved water on the Front Range is worth five or seven-—or eight—times the water conserved on the Western Slope. So, you can’t expect to get any participation if there isn’t compensation.
“And in a year like this, we couldn’t get anything. There just isn’t anything to conserve,” he said.
Chavez said that the modeling in the EIS still includes “magic water” that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere, so there are numerous issues with predictions.
Chavez said updates would be ongoing, and that the details related to any Colorado conservation program and reservoir operations and recovery are far from settled. McClow later provided another update: “Reclamation released the Record of Decision and the framework for 2027-2028 operations [August 21]. Nevada sued the Secretary of the Interior on [August 24] seeking to enjoin implementation of the Record Of Decision and framework,” he said. Again, far from settled.
