Daniel Salzler No. 1341
EnviroInsight.org Four Items January 16, 2026
—————Feel Free To Pass This Along To Others——————
If your watershed is doing something you would like others to know about, or you know
of something others can benefit from, let me know and I will place it in this Information .
If you want to be removed from the distribution list, please let me know.
Please note that all meetings listed are open.
Enhance your viewing by downloading the pdf file to view photos, etc.
The attached is all about improving life in the watershed through knowledge.
If you want to be removed from the distribution list,
please let me know. Please note that all meetings listed are open.
Check our website at EnviroInsight.org
1. New Federal Draft Outlines Options For Colorado River Management After 2026. After years of negotiations, the Colorado River Basin states, including Arizona, have been unable to come to an agreement on their own.
The Bureau of Reclamation has released a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) outlining potential options for managing Lakes Powell and Mead and related Colorado River reservoir operations after the current operating guidelines expire in 2026.
Federal officials said the draft does not identify a preferred alternative, allowing flexibility as negotiations continue among the seven basin states, tribes, and other stakeholders on how to manage the river system amid long-term drought and declining reservoir levels.
You can review the plans for yourself here
“The Department of the Interior is moving forward with this process to ensure environmental compliance is in place so operations can continue without interruption when the current guidelines expire,” Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Andrea Travnicek said in a press release. “The river and the 40 million people who depend on it cannot wait.”
The draft comes as the basin states themselves have been unable to come up with an agreement. Arizona leaders have blamed the upper basin states for the impasse, saying they’re unwilling to compromise on new conservation efforts.
Acting Commissioner Scott Cameron said Reclamation did not select a preferred alternative because discussions among stakeholders are still ongoing.
“Given the importance of a consensus-based approach to operations for the stability of the system, Reclamation has not yet identified a preferred alternative,” Cameron said. “Any agreement that is reached will be fully analyzed in the Final EIS.”
The draft EIS will be published in the Federal Register on January 16, 2026, beginning a 45-day public comment period that runs through March 2, 2026. Interior officials said a final decision on post-2026 operations will be made before October 1, 2026, the start of the 2027 water year.
The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million people, supports hydropower production in seven states, and serves 30 Tribal Nations and agricultural communities across 5.5 million acres of farmland. The river also supports ecosystems and endangered species throughout the region.
Conservation organizations that have been closely involved in Colorado River policy discussions said they are still reviewing the lengthy draft but raised early concerns about its scope and assumptions.
Great Basin Water Network Executive Director Kyle Roerink said he is concerned that the document focuses primarily on operations at Lakes Powell and Mead and does not fully evaluate broader systemwide alternatives.
“This is not a full Colorado River System review,” Roerink said.
Roerink also said the draft raises questions about how groundwater use is accounted for and how tribal water rights would be addressed under certain operational approaches.
“We will continue to review and assess in the coming days to better understand the impacts,” Roerink said.
Living Rivers Conservation Director John Weisheit said the draft illustrates the range of challenges facing the river system under continued drought conditions.
“The draft highlights scenarios where communities, ecosystems, and governments could face difficult conditions,” Weisheit said. “It underscores how much is at stake as these decisions are made.”
Reclamation will accept public comments on the draft beginning January 16. Agency officials said the Final EIS will incorporate feedback and any negotiated agreements reached among stakeholders, providing the framework for managing the Colorado River system after 2026. Make your comments known before March 2, 2026. Go to https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/draft-eis/index.html to review the draft EIS, and to comment, go to crbpost2026@usbr.gov.
Soure: abc15news January 9, 2026
2. Dairy Will Pay $11 million, Fallow Land To Ease Southern Arizona Water Worries. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said a settlement agreement between Arizona and a Minnesota-based dairy farming company will change groundwater policy across the state.
The deal — which Mayes’ office described as the first of its kind in Arizona and the U.S. — will require Riverview LLP to spend $11 million for southern Arizona residents affected by Riverview’s water use practices at its operations south of Willcox, Arizona, about 90 miles southeast of Tucson.
That money will pay for well-drilling, water hauling and groundwater access for the residents who have lost access to groundwater. Half the money will go to the Sulfur Springs Water Fund (SSWF) to help residents impacted outside a 1.6-mile radius of a Riverview irrigation well. The other half will go to the Riverview Funding Commitment to help those within that radius who were affected. Funds are also available to five designated schools in the area.
“This settlement sets a new precedent in Arizona, one where businesses commit to being good neighbors to the communities they operate in and make meaningful efforts to reduce pumping of our most precious resource — groundwater,” Mayes said in a statement. “As a daughter of rural Arizona, I can’t imagine anything more important than paving a new way forward to conserve groundwater and protect a future for the rural communities like Willcox and the Sulphur Springs Valley that define Arizona.”
Riverview runs a dairy operation south of Willcox, along with nearby farms for cattle feed. A Los Angeles Times report said that Riverview started buying land in that area in 2014 and now owns more than 37,000 acres. It pointed to an Arizona Republic investigation into Arizona’s biggest water users that showed Riverview had 420 wells in the area.
The SSWF money will be prioritized for replacement or redrilling of groundwater wells and providing access to tank systems, water fill stations and water hauling.
The settlement comes just as the Arizona Department of Water Resources is considering a major move later this month to begin regulating groundwater in La Paz County, about 100 miles west of Phoenix. That’s where Saudi company Fondomonte is pumping out groundwater from the Rainegras Plain basin to grow hay on thousands of acres that is in turn shipped overseas to cattle ranches in the Middle East. Fondomonte has been operating there since 2014 – when Doug Ducey was Arizona governor – and has been pumping out groundwater at an even higher rate than Riverview had been pumping.
As for Riverview, it will have no say in the management or disbursement of the SSWF fund, which will be managed by a five-member review panel appointed by the Sulphur Spring Alliance, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, the Arizona State University Sustainability Institute, the Water Resources Research Center of the University of Arizona, and the nonprofit.
Riverview will make contributions to the Riverview Funding Commitment over the course of 20 years. Riverview will manage that fund according to the terms of the agreement. In addition to the well and water hauling expenses, that fund will also contribute to improvements to existing community water systems.
New Conservation Measures Included
Other provisions of the Riverview deal will require the company to let 2,000 acres of irrigated farmland go fallow or be transitioned for a different use over the next 12 years. Those uses can include grazing, habitat or planting non-row crops. Riverview will not be able to sell or transfer ownership of the land without maintaining those changes.
Riverview will also be required to use best practices for conservation for its irrigated agricultural operations.
The agricultural company said it has already been implementing such practices and is prepared to work toward greater sustainability.
“Riverview values stewardship of the land and water – a healthy environment is essential to everything we do,” Riverview said in a statement. “That’s why we have invested and innovated over the past decade to ensure our farms in Cochise County are equipped with the best available technology to conserve water, as well as voluntarily fallowed farmland. Riverview also recognizes the water challenges facing the Sulphur Springs Valley, and we want to be part of the solution. Attorney General Mayes has helped highlight these challenges, and we appreciate her efforts in identifying these tangible steps to help Arizonans in need. By working together with state and local leaders, we can strengthen local water access and build a more sustainable future.”
The settlement has drawn praise from U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, as well as water-policy experts in the state.
Former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, now president of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, pointed to the deal’s applicability across the state beyond just the residents of Sulphur Springs Valley.
“This remarkable agreement will assure [those residents’] future access to water, the critical resource for every community,” Goddard said in a statement. “It is a creative approach and an example of how to protect other Arizona groundwater basins!” Source: Phoenix Business Journal
3. Being Aware Of What You Eat. The agriculture industry, revolutionized meat, production decades ago, when it discovered the adding antibiotics to animals, food and water made them grow plumper faster. Nowadays, farming operations burned through about 70% of the” medically important” anabiotic’s used in the US. This overuse has dangerous downsides.
The food and drug administration points to the industries reliance on anabiotic’s as a major culprit in the development of drug resistant, which now sicken 2 million Americans each year and kill 23,000.
In 2015, a strain of E. coli was discovered in pigs and humans that had evolved to withstand “colistin”, the potent anabiotic that has been considered a” last line of defense” against multi drug resisting pathogens. Source:Mother Jones
4. It’s Cold Outside At Night And Early Morning. That’s no reason to burn household plastic wrap for heat or cooking.Increased cost of heating fuel (electricity, No. 2 Fuel Oil, Natural Gas) is crushing the budgets of nearly everyone. DO NOT BURN PLASTIC MATERIALS!
Plastic production has skyrocketed since the 1950s, from a few million tons a year to nearly half a billion tons today, and is on track to triple by 2060. And since just asmall fraction of plastics is recycled, millions of tons of plastic—derived from fossil fuels and loaded with toxic chemical additives—enter the environment as waste every year. That staggering figure is also likely to triple by midcentury.
Since plastic is made from fossil fuels, it quickly ignites, giving cash-strapped dwellers a cheap, easy fuel and heat source. But these easily ignitable plastics are also made of thousands of harmful chemical additives.
Plastic combustion releases highly toxic substances that include particulate matter, heavy metals, cancer-causingdioxins andfurans, and scores of other compounds that accumulate in the food chain and people’s bodies. Inhaling these compounds causes diverse health problems, including chronic respiratory and breathing problems and cardiovascular stress.
To learn how to make burnable newspaper logs, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjeOqUfiQ1E. Soure: Inside Climate News, Jan 9, 2026
Copyright 2026 @ EnviroInsight.org
