Daniel Salzler No. 1340
EnviroInsight.org Three Items January 9, 2026
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- December Water Forecast A Sobering Backdrop To Colorado River Conference. LAS VEGAS – Federal water officials addressed the increasingly grim river conditions and laid out their options for dealing with plummeting reservoir levels over the first two days of the largest annual gathering of water managers in the Colorado River Basin.
On Monday, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released its monthly report, which projects a two-year hydrology outlook for the operation of the nation’s two largest reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The report provided a sobering backdrop to the Colorado River Water Users Association conference at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
With the slow start to winter in the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming), the report showed a drop in Lake Powell’s projected 2026 inflow of 1 million acre-feet since the November forecast. Under the “minimum” possible inflow, Lake Powell would fall below the surface-elevation level of 3,490 feet needed to generate hydropower by October 2026 and stay there until spring runoff briefly bumps up reservoir levels in summer 2027; but the water level would again dip below 3,490 in the fall of 2027.
Under the “most probable” forecast, the reservoir’s level stays above minimum power pool, but falls below the target elevation of 3,525 until the 2027 runoff. (Reservoir levels below the target elevation trigger more drastic emergency actions.) The reservoir is currently about 28% full, down from 37% at this time last year.
Wayne Pullan, regional director for the bureau’s Upper Basin, called the December projections troubling.
“That outlook is sobering for all of us,” Pullan said at Tuesday’s meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission.
Snowpack, which is lagging across the Upper Basin, hovered at around 61% of median Wednesday. Snowpack in the headwaters of the Colorado River was 53% of median.
The Colorado River basin has been locked in the grip of a megadrought since the turn of the century. Climate change and relentless demand have fueled shortages, pushed reservoirs to all-time lows and sent water managers scrambling.
Pullan laid out four tools that the Bureau of Reclamation can use to respond to the projected low water levels to prevent the surface of Lake Powell at the Glen Canyon Dam from falling below 3,500 feet in elevation.
The first tool is shifting some winter releases to the summer months when runoff into the reservoir will compensate for those releases. The second is releasing water from upstream reservoirs to boost Lake Powell. The third is reducing releases when water levels hit a certain trigger elevation.
The high-stakes fourth tool — which water managers across the basin are counting on to rescue reservoirs, set a new management paradigm and provide long-term stability to the system — is new guidelines for how the reservoirs will be operated and shortages shared after 2026.
Representatives from the Upper Basin and Lower Basin (Arizona, California and Nevada), which share the river, have been in talks for two years — with long periods of being deadlocked in disagreement — about how to manage the river after the current guidelines expire at the end of 2026. The 2007 guidelines set annual Lake Powell and Lake Mead releases based on reservoir levels and did not go far enough to prevent them from being drawn down during consecutive dry years.
“We have learned that if we failed at all in these last 25 years, it might have been that our vision wasn’t sufficiently pessimistic,” Pullan said.
States’ representatives have said they are still committed to finding a consensus after they blew past a Nov. 11 deadline to come up with an outline of a plan. Federal officials have set a second deadline of Feb. 14 for the states to submit a detailed plan.
While water managers across the basin wait for an agreement from the states, federal officials are moving ahead with the National Environmental Protection Act review process and crafting an environmental impact statement for future reservoir operations. Reclamation officials said that they plan to release a draft EIS around the end of the year and that the alternatives analyzed in the EIS will be broad enough that they would capture any seven-state agreement. The draft EIS will not choose a preferred alternative.
“Probably all of you have heard us say, ad nauseam, this emphasis on creating a broad range of alternatives,” Carly Jerla, a senior water resource program manager at the Bureau of Reclamation, said Wednesday. “We really went about this by taking input over the last almost two years from you all … to craft a broad range that really reflects the ideas on how to operate the system.”
Not a routine water source
This isn’t the first time the basin has experienced dire straits. In 2021, as Lake Powell flirted with falling below minimum power pool, the Bureau of Reclamation made 181,000 acre-feet in emergency releases from three Upper Basin reservoirs — Flaming Gorge, Navajo and Blue Mesa — to protect critical Lake Powell elevations.
These reservoirs are part of the Colorado River Storage Project, and their primary purpose is to control the flows of the Colorado River. But the unilateral action by the feds rubbed Upper Basin water managers the wrong way. The 36,000 acre-feet released from Blue Mesa cut short the boating season on Colorado’s largest reservoir, which is on the Gunnison River.
On Tuesday, Colorado’s representative, Becky Mitchell, said Upper Basin reservoirs are not a routine water source for the Lower Basin.
“I appreciate as we’re in critical and dire situations how we use our resources to protect our infrastructure, but we have to shift,” Mitchell said. “Our biggest resource is post-2026 and figuring out how do we do this in a way that doesn’t create those to be routine water sources.”
So far, the basin has avoided the worst outcomes by getting last-minute reprieves in the form of wet years in 2019 and 2023. But overall, Jerla said, the Colorado River can expect to see persistent dry years and challenging conditions in the future, and water managers will need more adaptive, flexible solutions.
“(This is) really our last year together operating under the existing agreements, kind of stretching the flexibilities and the bounds and stability which those agreements provide,” she said. Soure: Aspen Journalism, December 18, 2025
2. Water Wise
3. Eating Right In 2026: Arsenic In Brown Rice: What You Should Know. Americans who regularly eat brown rice instead of white may be exposing themselves to higher levels of the heavy metal arsenic, a recent study from Michigan State University finds.
The research also found that young children who often eat brown rice are particularly vulnerable. Arsenic is a known human carcinogen that is toxic to people of any age, and it can harm the developing brain of a baby or toddler.
Some simple changes at home, such as avoiding certain rice-based products, can help you reduce your risk of harm.
How does arsenic get in brown rice?
Brown rice is often seen as a healthier alternative to white rice, because it retains more nutrients in the grain’s outer layers, known as the bran. But that layer is also where arsenic can accumulate, leading to higher arsenic levels in brown rice than in white.
Heavy metals like arsenic are naturally present in water and soil. But industrial pollution and decades of agricultural use of arsenic-based pesticides have led to intense concentrations in some places.
While all plants can absorb some arsenic, rice plants are especially effective at pulling it from the soil, because of their physiology and growing conditions. These plants can accumulate 10 times more arsenic than other grain crops, in turn increasing your potential exposure.
Until governments act, here are steps that can reduce your family’s exposure to arsenic, including:
- Limiting your rice consumption, where possible.
- Rinsing rice and cooking it in extra water. This may reduce some of the arsenic content.
- Avoiding rice cereal as an infants’ first solid food. Nutritional guidance is shifting.Soft fruits, vegetables or even meats are great first sources of complementary nutrients for a breast- or formula-fed baby.
- Buying processed foods that don’t contain rice. Look for alternatives to rice-based processed foods.
- Limiting consumption of products whose labels list rice syrup as a sweetener.
Source:EWG.com
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