The (almost) quarterly newsletter seems to have been a casualty of Wink resigning from the board and moving away. Nicole is going to revive the newsletters at some point. In place of an August newsletter, I would like to reprint this article from the Washington Post, as it is directly relevant to our current situation.
From the Washington Post:
ORCHARD CITY, Colo. — On New Year’s Day in 2018, Paul Kehmeier and his father drove up Grand Mesa until they got to the county line, 10,000 feet above sea level. Instead of the three to five feet of snow that should have been on the ground, there wasn’t enough of a dusting to even cover the grass.
The men marveled at the sight, and Kehmeier snapped a photo of his dad, “standing on the bare pavement, next to bare ground.”
Here, on Colorado’s Western Slope, no snow means no snowpack. And no snowpack means no water in an area that’s so dry it’s lucky to get 10 inches of rain a year. A few months after taking the photo, Kehmeier stared across the land his family had tilled for four generations and made a harsh calculation: He could make more money selling his ranch’s water than working his land.
Water from Colorado’s snowpack is distributed across the region through a complex network of dams, pipelines and irrigation canals.
A 20-year drought is stealing the water that sustains this region, and climate change is making it worse.
