⛈️ WACKY WEATHER WATCH⚡️
Welcome to another edition of the Land Desk’s NEWSWIRE, and yet another one in which the big news is the big, end-of-the-water-year rain. Yes, 88% of the Western U.S. is currently experiencing some level of drought — with the most severe impacts in the Four Corners Country. Yet these same areas have also been barraged with rain and inundated with flood watches and warnings for the last few weeks, and yet another big doozy is on its way.
As of Monday morning (9/28), all of New Mexico, most of Arizona, and southern Utah and southern Colorado were all under a flood watch in effect through Wednesday morning. The National Weather Service is warning that rainfall rates in some places could be up to one to two inches per hour.
The latest round of storms will hit already sodden ground in places that have received more rain in the last couple of weeks than they normally do during the entire monsoon season.
🌵 PUBLIC LANDS 🌲
The Trump administration is reportedly considering Major League Baseball’s request to build a stadium and host a game in Grand Teton National Park, but a White House spokesperson says it is not an administration priority. (WyoFile)
Western Watersheds Project and Basin and Range Watch formally protest the proposed 300-megawatt Bonanza solar-plus-storage project on 5,133 acres of public land in southern Nevada, saying it would fragment desert tortoise habitat and degrade vegetation and soils the tortoise depends on. (news release, BLM project page)
A Western journalist details the ways Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has disappointed conservationists and all Americans by “pulverizing environmental safeguards, leaving America’s public lands vulnerable for corporations to plunder at will.” (High Country News)
The Bureau of Land Management begins an aerial herbicide campaign on about 3,800 acres of public land in Sandoval and Cibola counties in New Mexico that will distribute Tebuthiron pellets in an effort to “enhance native plant diversity by reducing dense stands of sagebrush, juniper trees, and rabbitbrush.” (BLM news release)
The Bureau of Land Management greenlights the Indian Creek “watershed restoration” project that will include clearing piñon-juniper forest via chaining, mastication, and other methods on about 561,000 acres of public land in southwestern Utah. (news release)
The U.S. Forest Service seeks public input until Oct. 9 on its proposal to turn management of the Maroon Bells Scenic Area over to Pitkin County amid funding shortfalls. (news release, CBS News)
🌨️🦦🚣🏽 WATER WATCH 🌊
Washington County, Utah, plans to construct a wastewater treatment-recycling plant demonstration facility to help educate residents on water recycling and get them past the “ick factor” associated with “toilet-to-tap” facilities. (Salt Lake Tribune)
👩🏽🔬 SCIENCE! 🧫
University of California, Davis, researchers find orange water released by thawing permafrost into Alaska rivers can be more acidic and contain higher concentrations of metals than acid mine drainage. (news release)
⛏️ MINING MONITOR ⛏️
A federal study finds a major tailings spill at the proposed Donlin Gold mine in the Kuskokwim River watershed of southwest Alaska would inundate thousands of acres of land and portions of a village in the Crooked Creek drainage, alter stream channels, cause long-term harm to aquatic and terrestrial wildlife, and result in downstream heavy metal contamination that could last for over a century. (Mining, Draft Supplemental EIS)
Ivanhoe Electric relinquishes 642 unpatented mining claims covering 13,264 acres in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico where it planned to explore for copper following widespread local opposition. (news release)
The White Mesa Concerned Community and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe will hold their annual rally and spiritual walk to protest the White Mesa uranium mill in southeastern Utah on Oct. 17 at 11 a.m. at the White Mesa Community Center. (Grand Canyon Trust)
🛢️ FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES 📈
Earthworks’ Protect Navajo Air campaign develops an interactive map showing oil and gas facilities’ proximity to schools and health care facilities and related air and water polluting incidents in the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico. (Protect Navajo Air)
An energy economics firm urges the Rural Utah Infrastructure Coalition not to invest as much as $54 million in two proposed coal export terminals on the West Coast, saying they are too risky and may not open Utah coal to foreign markets. (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis)
🔥 WILDFIRE LOOKOUT 🔥
San Juan County, Utah, drops charges against a former resident and journalist accused of sparking the 2025 Deer Creek Fire near La Sal after flaws in the state’s investigation are revealed and amid questions about the county’s political motivations. (Salt Lake Tribune)
🤑 GENTRIFICATION JOURNAL 💰
An analysis of IRS data finds Teton County, Wyoming, was again the nation’s richest county in 2023 — with a per-capita income of $313,373 — followed distantly by Pitkin County, Colorado, and Blaine County, Idaho; yet even as residents became wealthier, they became less charitably inclined. (CoThrive)
🔋 THE GRID⚡️
The U.S. Energy Department awards Xcel Energy two $250 million grants for high-voltage transmission projects in southeastern Colorado designed to expand connections between the Western and Eastern power grids and bring wind power from the Great Plains to Colorado’s Front Range. (Big Pivots)
Weld County, Colorado’s commissioners vote to approve Enyo Energy’s 805-megawatt Chalk Bluff wind and solar-plus-storage project on mostly private land in the oil and gas-rich northeastern corner of the state. (Colorado Sun)
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission pauses its licensing process for rPlus Hydro’s proposed pumped hydropower storage project at Seminoe Reservoir in Wyoming to allow the Bureau of Land Management to complete an environmental review of the contested project. (WyoFile)
Phoenix-area utility Salt River Project’s board votes to approve the proposed Marigold Energy Center in Stanfield, Arizona. The project will include 600 MW of solar, 400 MW of battery storage, and 675 MW of natural gas generation, along with a new substation and four miles of transmission lines, in an effort to meet growing demand and enhance grid reliability. (news release)
Nevada utility NV Energy becomes the ninth Western entity to join the California Independent System Operator’s extended day-ahead wholesale electricity market that will help integrate the balkanized Western grid. (Public Power)
OTHER NEWS
The National Congress of American Indians files an amicus brief in Tohono O’odham Nation v. Mullin challenging the Trump administration’s plan to build a border wall through the Tohono O’odham nation in southern Arizona, calling it an “unlawful infringement on tribal sovereignty.” (news release)
🥵 ARIDIFICATION WATCH 🐫
New Mexico farmers say this summer’s extreme heat stunted green chile crops’ growth, leading to a roasting-season shortage in many parts of the state, adding that a “Biblical” grasshopper infestation also curtailed yield. (KRQE)
🤖 DATA CENTER DIGEST 👾
Nevada-based Arevia Power proposes a “multi-building” data center on about 3,700 acres of federal public land near Boise, Idaho; the Bureau of Land Management says the agency is in the “pre-planning phase” and has released few details. (Idaho Statesman)
🐟 COLORADO RIVER CHRONICLE 💧
Colorado River watcher Ken Neubecker speculates about how a Lower Basin compact call might play out in Colorado. (Ken’s Substack)
📸 PARTING SHOT 🎞️
So much happy news, I don't know where to start! ;-)
Trump's 'vengeance term', whereby his actions seem less motivated by policy than by a desire to punish people who didn't vote for him, results in an overwhelming list of attacks on public land. So sad. And well known, so what stood out for me was the protest against the solar project in Nevada, because that was from 'our side'.
Trump is a sociopath, but did get elected, in part I think because what is the alternative? Does anyone think the liberal policies were working well?
This protest is an example: Obviously solar is good, we need more energy, Nevada isn't crowded with people or cropland, so "Plant PV, harvest electrons" is a great plan. But it's being protested. Every square meter on earth is "critical habitat" in a certain way of thinking, and every action has a consequence, so we weigh what's best, make a decision, and get sh*t done. Except in recent decades, we haven't done that. So it's not just Trump; liberals have opposed many climate action projects to a degree that IMO is very unrealistic, unproductive, and unfortunate.
In my usual "glass is half full of poison" view, I find the following in the story about the billion dollar intertie from the best wind area in Colorado to Kansas, "This new connecting line is to move power to and from a substation in southwest Kansas near Holcomb, site of a major coal plant and associated infrastructure." Polis prattles on with platitudes. If as you write, this will get us "wind power from the Great Plains," would that not mean fewer tax and job-generating wind turbines in SW CO, where they have been promised in return for hosting hundreds of towers of the "Power Pathway?" Lots going on behind the curtain here, including the effort to get CO utilities to sign up with certain "markets," instead of California's.
And my also usual "solar everywhere" mode, while certain groups can repeat their old objections to the new Bonanza solar project, the 5000 acre Gemini project N of Vegas seems to be doing well at hosting returning tortoises, and rare plants. These fenced areas may actually provide refuges from ATVs, though I understand disease is their biggest enemy. Lots of info on wildlife and solar observations are briefly noted in just publised summary of the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute 2025 meeting. https://rewi.org/resources/3rd-solar-wildlife-ecosystems-research-meeting-proceedings/