Spring runoff has peaked!
Also: Pearce confirmed to lead Bureau of Livestock and Mining
🌨️🦦🚣🏽 Predict the Peak! 🌊
When the scorching late March heat wave came for what little was left of the meagre snowpack, I was almost certain that it would cause rivers to hit their peak spring runoff levels in early April. That would have been the earliest spring runoff on record and a grim omen for the rest of the summer. Most of the contestants in this year’s predict-the-peak contest apparently had the same idea.
Luckily, we were proven wrong, in most cases: A series of spring storms and successive cold spells in April and even May managed to slow the melt and push the peak to a more reasonable mid-May date. A later runoff means streamflows will subside later, stretching out the irrigating and reservoir-filling season just a little bit longer.
There were exceptions, including the San Miguel River, which hit its spring high flow on April 2. And the Dolores River, which peaked at an absurdly early date of March 26. These both drain the western side of the San Juan Mountains, which apparently bore the brunt of the crappy winter. Still, even those rivers had a sort of second run-off season.
Here are the numbers for our contest rivers, followed by the streamflow and snowpack graphs:
The Animas River in Durango, Colorado: After topping out at 1,010 cubic feet per-second on March 27, the Animas came back and peaked on May 15 at 1,460 cfs.
The San Miguel River at Uravan, Colorado: The river hit 400 cfs on April 2, plummeted to just 63 cfs in late April, and then recovered for a second runoff and reaching 241 cfs on May 15.
The Yampa River near Maybell, Colorado: This river’s watershed got a bigger boost from the April storms than those further to the south, giving it a peak runoff of 3,480 cfs on May 16. This is the only river I’m hesitant to call, because the Upper Yampa watershed still has 2.8 inches of snow water equivalent, according to SNOTEL figures. If a temperature spike were to melt all of that at once, it could result in a larger peak.
San Juan River at Carracas, Colorado: The San Juan hit 1,090 cfs on April 2, which sure looked like the peak. But on May 15 it reached 1,140 cfs.
Nearly all of the contestants in the PtP contest chose April and even March dates for the peak, making the date part of the contest almost irrelevant. So I’m focusing on who was the closest on peak flows. And the winners are …
Animas (2 winners) 1. B Frank, with a guess of 1,468 cfs (wow! Only 8 cfs off) 2. Sharon Englehart, who guessed 1,500 cfs on June 1. While B Frank was closer in flow, Sharon was closer to the correct date.
San Miguel: Florence Paillard with a guess of 450 cfs
Yampa: B Frank again with 4,127 cfs
San Juan: J Harvey barely edges out B Frank with a guess of 850 cfs
So congratulations to B Frank, J Harvey, Florence Paillard, and Sharon Englehart! Please send your mailing address to landdesk@substack.com and I’ll send you your prizes.
🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧
Peak runoff on the Colorado River’s tributaries naturally flows down to the mainstem, as well, so long as there’s not a dam or other diversion preventing it from doing so. Unfortunately, however, the mid-May streamflow surges were barely discernible in the Colorado and San Juan rivers by the time they reached Lake Powell.
But Lake Powell did get a bit of a boost this month, only it wasn’t exactly “natural.” Lake Powell’s inflows jumped from as low as 3,500 cfs in late April to nearly 15,000 cfs on May 16. Yet more than 9,000 cfs of this can be attributed to extra releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Green River. That’s a lot of water coming down the river, and it did boost Lake Powell’s surface level by a whopping … half an inch or so.
Yikes.
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
On Monday, the GOP-dominated U.S. Senate confirmed Steven Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management and oversee some 245 million acres of public lands. Pearce, a right-wing ideologue, former congressman from New Mexico, and a one-time executive of an oilfield services company has long been hostile to the very idea of public lands.
Advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers have responded to the move with outrage, shock, and dismay, and they have flooded my e-mailbox with claims that this confirmation represents an action that could “redefine public lands as we know them,” as one statement said, and will lead to the wholesale sell off of those same lands.
To be sure, Pearce is a terrible choice for the position, and by confirming him the GOP reinforced the fact that they are willing to sacrifice Americans’ lands and waters to stay on Trump’s good side. But had they rejected Pearce, the administration would simply pick someone who is equally atrocious, although maybe a little bit less open about it. Or maybe they wouldn’t nominate anyone at all, and instead illegally assign a perpetually acting director, as was the case during Trump’s first term with William Perry Pendley.
And even if the administration did nominate a career bureaucrat or someone more reasonable than Pearce, the fact remains: They would either carry out the Trump/Doug Burgum mission, which is to bring the agency back to the days of the Bureau of Livestock and Mining, or they’d be canned. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was widely considered to be a strong and reasonable choice for that position — even garnering the endorsement of REI’s board of directors — and he has turned out to be one of the most extraction-friendly Interior secretaries in history. Indeed, the administration has already been doing a fairly thorough job of executing their plan without a confirmed BLM director, so why would Pearce make any bit of difference?
Trump’s election is what started redefining public lands. Pearce’s confirmation is just another step in the continued assault on the nation’s lands, air, water, and the communities that depend on them.
Over the past 16 months, the administration has leased out hundreds of thousands of acres of land to oil and gas companies, handed out drilling permits like lollipops at a bank, fast-tracked uranium mine permits, cut the public out of environmental reviews, opened up millions of acres to energy development, and transferred public lands — all without an official BLM director. And in the weeks leading up to Pearce’s confirmation, at least nine BLM state and associate state directors accepted the administration’s deferred resignation and buyout program. In other words, they jumped ship voluntarily, perhaps because they could see that it was sinking.
So far, the administration hasn’t shrunk any national monuments or tried any large-scale land selloffs, with the exception of conveying 1.4 million acres of land in the Dalton Utility Corridor to the state of Alaska. This was a unique situation in that it was done under the 1959 Alaska Statehood Act, which authorized the transfer of 105 million acres of public land to the state for economic development purposes (which, in Alaska, usually translates to oil and gas drilling). As we saw during his first term, Trump doesn’t need Pearce — or any BLM director at all — to diminish national monuments or transfer lands.
In other words, Pearce’s confirmation is just more of the same.