Friday Mish-Mash

Photo illustration by Jonathan P. Thompson.

There’s a lot going on in the Land Desk beat these days, making it difficult to keep up and to focus on any one element of the orders and job and funding cuts coming out of the White House. I suspect that’s partially by design: They’re trying to disorient the American public so we lose track of what they’re actually trying to do. Rest assured, I’m doing my best to keep an eye on all of it and to watch where the pieces land.

Oh, and y’all gave some wonderful responses to Tuesday’s thread on coping. If you haven’t already, go over there and read through them. And thank you all for participating.

I want to use today’s dispatch to catch up on a few things, briefly …

First, some good news: The storm that was expected to hit a big swath of the West delivered, bringing a fair amount of moisture to places that desperately needed it. The San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado were one of the biggest beneficiaries, with high-country SNOTEL stations gaining two to four inches of snow water equivalent (which amounts to a lot of snow). Red Mountain Pass’s snowpack was brought back up to normal for the date. Las Vegas, Nevada, which hadn’t seen measurable precipitation for more than 200 days, got a relative soaking (.57”). And the snowpack in the mountains above Flagstaff, where the snow situation has been especially grim this year, was also bolstered. Yet the snowpack remains below normal in the more southerly zones.

All of that new snow falling on top of old, rotten snow resulted in an unstable snowpack. That led to dozens of avalanches — many naturally triggered, others set off by skiers or snowmobilers — across the region, some of which buried people, one fatally. On Feb. 20, a backcountry skier and a snowboarder were on a feature called The Nose in the Mineral Creek drainage near Silverton, when they were caught in an avalanche. The skier was able to escape; the snowboarder, reportedly a 41-year-old woman from Crested Butte, was buried and did not survive. In February 2021, an avalanche on The Nose killed four caught four backcountry skiers, killing three of them.

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

In somewhat related news … At the end of each water year, I like to run this chart of the “natural flows” at Lees Ferry on the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam. Natural flow is a calculation of how much water would have passed that point had there been no upstream diversions (because of Glen Canyon Dam, the actual flows at Lees Ferry are highly regulated and vary only slightly from year to year). In other words, it’s a reflection of the hydrologic health of the Upper Colorado River Basin. I forgot to run this one the WY 2024 data was first released, so here you go.

It’s worth noting that this year’s snowpack in the Upper Colorado River watershed (second graph below) is slightly below where it was last year on this date. If that trend continues, you can expect the natural flow to also be lower than last year’s, which is a bit worrisome.

Source: Bureau of Reclamation.

🌵 Public Lands 🌲

Earlier this month, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum addressed the National Congress of American Indians. It was a bit of a rambling speech in which he said this, about public lands, which I thought was rather telling:

If we’re going to pay down the $36 trillion dollar debt, then we gotta figure out a way to not just focus on our liabilities — that’s the $36 trillion — but we got a bunch of assets. We might have $100 trillion in assets. Those assets are out there in public lands… I’m talking about the fact that we have 500 million acres of land that are in public hands that were put away for the benefit and use of the American public. … Some of that land is inhospitable or unoccupied, but underneath that it has value to allow us … whether its critical minerals, energy resources, using that for wind or solar — whatever — almost equivalent to a quarter of the lower 48 is public lands, and yet our return on that investment right now is almost nothing, it’s one of the ways we can create the funding for everyone.

First of all, his notion that any public lands that aren’t designated as a national park or monument is “inhospitable or unoccupied” and is therefore lacking in value (aside from the commodities contained within) is a bunch of bunk. And yet it reveals how this guy sees the millions of acres of public land he is charged with overseeing. Also, the guy apparently hasn’t been paying attention, because for him to say that “our return on that investment right now is almost nothing” is a load of horseshit. Last year, natural resource extraction from federal lands generated more than $16 billion in revenue, mostly from oil and gas drilling and coal mining, and mostly from lands that Burgum considers “inhospitable.”

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Former President Joe Biden received a lot of flack from some greens for failing to live up to his campaign promise of ending oil and gas drilling on federal lands. He was also saddled with a not-quite-accurate claim that his administration issued more drilling permits than the first Trump administration. But what often escaped notice, is that Biden leased out far less public land to drillers than any other administration in years. This didn’t slow drilling or oil and gas production one bit, showing that oil and gas companies lease land speculatively, with no intention of developing it, to bolster their reserves and assets.

Source: Bureau of Land Management.

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⛏️Mining Monitor ⛏️

There is a lot of talk about a looming uranium mining renaissance on the Colorado Plateau, but the only significant ore production appears to be at Energy Fuels’ Pinyon Plain, née Canyon, Mine on traditional Havasupai land near Red Butte and within the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.

The mining has sparked controversy, since it could contaminate groundwater, among other impacts. And so has the transportation of the ore, via tarp-covered big rigs, across the Navajo Nation to the White Mesa uranium mill in San Juan County, Utah. When Energy Fuels sent its first trucks northward, across an accident-riddled route, it ran into a figurative roadblock, as the Navajo Nation and Arizona’s attorney general protested. The shipments were put on hold.

Earlier this month, the Navajo Nation and Energy Fuels entered into an ore transport agreement and the shipments resumed last week. But the fight to stop the trucks has not subsided. Advocacy groups, Diné citizens, and the Havasupai Tribe continue to push back, and have condemned Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren and the tribal council for a lack of transparency and failing to include other tribal nations in its negotiations.

“This is real for us,” the Havasupai Tribal Council wrote in a statement. “We live here. Our culture and traditions originate here and are knit together with who we are as individual tribal members and as a tribe. … Today there are two trucks, by month’s end it will be four trucks, each hauling 24 tons of this dangerous and highly toxic material. It is clear that EFRI has no regard for others and is simply acting in their own interest. … We will not give up. We owe that to our ancestors, our children, and the generations to come. We will fight on.”

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🏠 Random Real Estate Room 🤑

Got an extra $15 million lying around? Then you can buy the iconic Bear Creek Falls outside of Telluride, along with about 33 acres across five patented mining claims. The current owners allow the public to access the land via a nice trail from town. Let’s hope whoever buys it does the same. This particular part of the drainage is riddled with big slide paths, so you wouldn’t expect anyone to develop it. But then …

🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭

I don’t have much to say about this one, except that I really love these old site sketches of Puebloan structures. This one is by W.H. Holmes, from “Report on the Ancient Ruins of Southwestern Colorado, Examined During the Summers of 1875 and 1876.”