The Runoff | Colorado’s hottest water year leaves its mark

Welcome back to The Runoff, Aspen Journalism’s Water Desk newsletter providing insider news and water-related updates you won’t read anywhere else. We are covering stories related to record-breaking Water Year 2026 and how it’s impacting local communities and how water managers are scrambling to adapt. Find updates under The Briefing and catch up on the most recent reporting from our water desk, along with additional context and updates on these stories, under The Recap. 

Thanks for going deeper with us and for supporting our nonprofit, in-depth, investigative reporting.

– Heather Sackett
Water Desk Editor and Reporter

Colorado’s Water Year 2026

Water Year 2026 ended on Sept. 30 and it was a doozy. We finally have all the data from the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University, and this water year was one for the record books – and not in a good way. 

Record-low snowpack, drought, and record-low streamflows and reservoirs made headlines around the state. But it was the heat that really stood out. According to the Colorado Climate Center’s report on the water year, temperatures were 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for the state this year, with 21.7 times more daily warm records than daily cool records, the most unbalanced this ratio has ever been. 

It was the hottest meteorological winter, spring and summer ever, with seven statewide heat waves. This is not even counting December and March’s record heat, because heat waves are defined based on the very highest temperatures (summer), not how unusual they were for the time of year. Colorado saw the warmest December, February, March and August and the second-warmest July and September. Nearly half the water year (165 days) was at least 5 degrees above average and 75 days were at least 10 degrees above average.

March was the outlier, with temperatures a whopping 9.8 degrees F above the March 1991-2020 average. Statewide, April would end up being more than 1 degree cooler than March. The record-smashing March heat decimated the snow, resulting in the lowest-ever April 1 snowpack, which translated into record-low streamflows.

The impacts were felt from the headwaters where ski town economies took a hit from a lack of snow, to severe drought restrictions for some towns and cities, to downstream farmers who fallowed fields because there wasn’t enough water to grow crops.

Although this water year was by far the hottest, it was not the driest. The water year is measured in line with the snow accumulation season and rainstorms in October 2025 and September 2026 bumped up the year’s total moisture. While it came too late for crops, streams and reservoirs, September’s rainstorms bumped the month up to the fifth wettest on record. Overall, the water year ended as the 18th  driest over a 131-year period of record.

Like state climatologist Russ Schumacher said in his presentation at the Sept. 18 River District annual water seminar, there is a tiny silver lining to this sweltering year: Even with the current climate trajectory, because this year’s hot temperatures were such an anomaly, we can expect the next few years to be cooler. Years like this won’t be the norm — at least for a while.

“We’re not going to expect that next year or the year after is going to be as warm as this one,” he said. “This is going to stand as an outlier for a while.”

Look for Aspen Journalism’s more in-depth exploration of the impacts of Water Year 2026, where we look at some of the record-low stream gauge data, in the coming weeks.

Pitkin County to offload shares of water, pay back Healthy Rivers fund

Pitkin County commissioners gave initial approval on Wednesday to selling 34 shares of recently purchased water, with the proceeds going to reimburse the Healthy Rivers fund. According to a county memo, Pitkin County will sell the shares of Fountain Mutual Irrigation Company water to the Donala Water and Sanitation District for $882,800. Donala serves an area north of Colorado Springs and east of the Air Force Academy. 

Earlier this year, Pitkin County bought 60 shares of water from Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co. and was required to buy the Fountain shares as part of the $6.5 million deal. But the 34 Fountain shares were not decreed for use on the Western Slope, so the county had always planned to trade or sell them. 

Pitkin County made a second purchase of 4.68 shares of Twin Lakes water this summer for $442,500, a move that was opposed by members of the county’s Healthy Rivers board, which advises the BOCC and said the water buy would negatively impact the program’s budget. 

The deal is expected to close around Jan. 9, 2027.

Crystal River Wild & Scenic study

A report looking at the feasibility of a federal Wild & Scenic designation has found that this remains a potentially powerful but complex tool for Crystal River protections. The feasibility subcommittee was one of three subcommittees looking at ways to protect one of the last free-flowing rivers in the state. The goal was to report back to the larger steering committee on how well a designation could meet certain criteria for protecting the river. 

According to the report, a designation appears to offer durable protection against dams, out-of-basin diversions and certain federally assisted water projects that could harm the river. It also appears a designation could be tailored specifically to the Crystal to offer existing-use protections and no-condemnation provisions, all concerns that opponents to Wild & Scenic legislation have had. But questions remain. 

It’s still unclear whether existing water rights, agriculture, augmentation and local infrastructure can be protected with sufficient certainty, whether private property concerns can be addressed and whether the U.S. Forest Service, local governments, landowners and partners would have enough capacity to implement a designation in a timely and trusted way.

“These issues are likely to determine whether Wild and Scenic designation is viewed as a workable community protection tool or as a source of unacceptable uncertainty,” the report reads. 

Pitkin County Commissioner Francie Jacober, who ranches in the Crystal River Valley, is co-chair of the subcommittee, taking over from former Commissioner Kelly McNicolas Kury. Jacober, who supports a Wild & Scenic designation, said the process was long and somewhat laborious, and that it gave an outsized voice to opponents, who she said represent a minority of negative voices out of thousands of supporters. But she said this year’s extreme drought has made her rethink whether storage is needed in the Crystal River Valley. 

“I just want to make sure that we don’t eliminate all possibilities for storage off the main stem if that seems to be an approach that will help in years of drought,” she said. “With Pitkin County buying shares from Twin Lakes, it’s really made me really painfully aware this summer that we don’t have any resource like that for the Crystal.” 

Shoshone case update

The trial dates have been set in the River District’s Shoshone water court case: July 10 to Aug. 4, 2028. Setting the date this far out is how some water court cases work, and it doesn’t mean the case is automatically headed to trial. The River District could still reach settlement agreements with the more than 60 opposers in the case, in particular the Front Range water providers, who take issue with aspects of the River District’s plan. 

The water court will usually set deadlines and dates for filings and conferences by working backward from the trial date. And with this many parties involved in the case, getting it scheduled on everyone’s calendar two years out is a good idea. 

The River District is planning to buy the water rights associated with the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon. It must add an instream flow water right to benefit the environment to the water right, which is currently only allowed to be used for hydropower. And the water court process is how that happens.

Headwaters Economics report

A new report by Harvey Economics, commissioned by the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, says that drought and water scarcity drives economic uncertainty in Colorado’s headwaters counties. This region includes Eagle, Grand, Gunnison, Pitkin, Routt and Summit counties, which encompass the headwaters of the Colorado River and some of its tributaries. According to the report, the economic picture is bright, and population, employment, recreation and tourism are all predicted to grow – provided there is an adequate water supply. 

The bulk of recent economic activity is water-based and includes snow sports like skiing, fishing and boating. Climate-change-based threats like water quantity, water temperature, water quality and watershed health, as well as transmountain diversions, are top concerns for headwaters counties, the report said. 

Pitkin County Commissioner Jeffrey Woodruff is on the Colorado Basin Roundtable and NWCCOG Water Quality and Quantity Committee. He pointed out the connection between protecting water resources and land, and the importance of balancing recreation, agriculture and natural ecosystems. 

“We are facing increased intensity, visitation and second homeowner demand during peak summer and winter seasons,” Woodruff said in an email. “But as we have seen, and is outlined in the report, there is a time mismatch between availability of water and use or need. … Land use continues to favor growth in our municipalities and this growth will be restrained by availability and storage.”

Arizona joins Nevada in lawsuit against feds

In August, the state of Nevada did something not many Colorado River watchers had on their 2026 bingo card: It sued the federal government over the new operating plan for the river, which includes deep cuts to the Lower Basin states’ water allocation. Based on the saber rattling, it seemed Arizona would have been the most likely to fire the first shots. On Friday, Arizona joined that lawsuit with Nevada, filing a motion to intervene. 

Arizona and Nevada say the NEPA process was flawed because it did not consider the extent of the harm caused by the cuts to those states. Arizona says the cuts could effectively dry up the Central Arizona Project, which brings water to the Phoenix area.

“Arizona’s decision to join our lawsuit is an important step in challenging a federal plan that unfairly burdens the Lower Basin and fails to require the Upper Basin to make meaningful reductions,” said Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo in a prepared statement. “Nevada will not accept a framework that puts our water supply and the future of our communities at risk.”

To be clear, this is not the much-talked-about-and-legally-murky compact call, which could happen if the Upper Basin failed to send enough water downstream to the Lower Basin states. 

Under the feds’ plan for the next two years, the Lower Basin will take cuts of 1.25 million acre-feet, with Nevada taking cuts of 50,000 acre-feet, which is one-sixth of the state’s 300,000 acre-feet a year it gets from the Colorado River and the smallest share of any state by far. A water cut of that size could be devastating for Las Vegas.

An op-ed from the Colorado-based environmental organization Save The Colorado says they stand with Nevada because the state has built the most aggressive water conservation programs of any of the seven states that share the river. This includes water cops that enforce restrictions, limiting residential pools and evaporative cooling systems for commercial buildings, and water recycling. This is in contrast to the Upper Basin, and Colorado in particular, where there’s still a lot of places to tighten up. Colorado still has tons of thirsty, non-functional grass, many future reservoir projects are still on the books and Front Range water providers did not reduce their water use this summer as much as one might expect during a historic drought.  

“If the Upper Basin matched even a fraction of Southern Nevada’s water use and conservation ambition, the river would be healthier and the Grand Canyon more verdant,” the op-ed’s author Gary Wockner wrote.

Upper Initial Units paper

The Colorado River brain trust is back with another paper that this time takes aim at releases from the Upper Initial Units, otherwise known as Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo reservoirs. Experts and academics Eric Kuhn, Anne Castle, Jack Schmidt, Kathryn Sorensen and Katherine Tara say in their Oct. 6 paper that until the basin’s water use is brought in line with the existing supply, releasing water from these upstream reservoirs only delays the permanent reductions in water use necessary to bring the basin into balance. 

Operation of the UIUs have emerged from obscurity in recent years and they now play an important role in the system’s management. The primary reason they exist is to help the Upper Basin states meet their Colorado River Compact obligations to deliver water downstream. But since 2021, they have served a different purpose. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation owns and operates these reservoirs and releases water from them to prop up Lake Powell and keep levels high enough there to protect critical infrastructure, including the ability to make hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. 

Reclamation is planning to release 1 million acre-feet from Flaming Gorge between April 2026 and April 2027. If the basin sees another dry year in 2027, some worry about the ability to refill these reservoirs. The feds didn’t even tap Blue Mesa this year and it still fell to a record low. It is currently just 17% full. 

The experts do not mince words in this latest paper.

“Until the basin’s math problem is solved either through litigation or negotiations, different strategies for operating both the UIUs and Lake Powell may buy some time and provide some operational flexibility, but ultimately, they are nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship,” the paper reads.