This is a bit of an unusual newsletter. I’m writing you tonight to ask that you make your voices heard as the USDA moves to remove protections from 45 million acres of your public lands. I only ask for your help because I feel that this is among the most important decisions in the history of public lands in the United States. For a non-partisan explainer of the issue, I found this article from the University of Wyoming School of Law very helpful.

If you want my take, USDA is hoping to facilitate widespread, wasteful extraction that will benefit only the timber, mining and oil companies receiving free road building services courtesy of your tax dollars. Those proposing to rescind the Roadless Rule do so under the guise of active management for healthier forests. If this were truly the case, hundreds of thousands of citizens who use and cherish public lands would not be pleading with USDA to keep the rule in place. The truth is that the Roadless Rule stands in the way of wasteful extraction at the taxpayers’ expense, and certain politicians smell an opportunity to rip those protections away from some of America’s last truly wild places.

I ask each of you to submit a comment letting USDA know how you feel about their proposal to build roads through our last untouched wilderness areas. If you disagree with me, that’s ok. Make your voice heard anyway. It’s important that we all participate.

The following is the comment that I submitted to the USDA. Please feel free to use any or all of it in your comment. The comment period closes on October 6th. Submit your comment here:

To the United States Department of Agriculture,

I am deeply concerned that the proposed plan to rescind the Roadless Rule would cause irreparable harm to some of the healthiest ecosystems in America while increasing the risk of catastrophic wildfire.

Building roads in wilderness areas has been shown to increase the risk of wildfire, which directly opposes the goals of the Wildfire Prevention Act. The Roadless Rule already allows for firefighting activities in wilderness areas, and the idea that disrupting ecosystems to construct roads would decrease wildfire risk needs to be reconsidered.

I am also concerned that repealing the roadless rule would allow for wasteful extraction at taxpayer expense. The USDA already has billions of dollars of deferred maintenance to perform on existing roads, and building purposeless roads in wilderness areas would only add to this expense. Building roads into places like the Tongass National Forest in the name of timber extraction is misguided and likely to waste taxpayer dollars.

Before taking action to dismantle some of America’s most treasured wilderness, I would ask you to take a hard look at the facts, science, and economics of such a drastic measure. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Sincerely,

Thomas Austin

Though I don’t plan to do any more technical reporting on the Colorado River negotiations for the time being, I do plan to provide updates as the situation evolves. For anyone new to the subject, I’d encourage you to read the River Divided series that I published in this newsletter last year. Links to that series are here: Intro, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Since I wrapped up my series of newsletters explaining the ongoing Colorado River negotiations, the Colorado River Basin has descended into one of the worst winter droughts in recorded history. As a whole, the basin’s snowpack sits at 68% of the median for this date. For reference, that puts us almost perfectly on pace with the winter of 2002, infamous as the worst year on record for Colorado River runoff. In the plot below, which measures the amount of water stored as snow in the mountains, 2026 is the black line and 2002 is the dark green line.

In 2002, poor snowpack and dry soil conditions colluded to create meager spring runoff in the mountain streams of Colorado. The water that trickled into Lake Powell in Water Year (WY) 2002 totaled 2.64 million acre-feet (MAF), just 28 percent of the average annual inflows during the remarkably dry period from 2000 to 2025. The average during that period was 8.29 MAF per year. Lake Powell and Lake Mead were both drawn down considerably. By early 2003, Lake Powell was at its lowest level since it had first filled. By all accounts, the reservoir and its facilities were in trouble. Today, despite drought-focused reservoir operations, the surface of the reservoir sits nearly 90 feet lower than it did in early 2003 and only 40 feet above minimum power pool.

Minimum power pool is the level at which Lake Powell is too empty to safely generate hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. If the turbines keep spinning below the minimum power pool elevation (3,490 feet above sea level), whirlpools could form and cause cavitation in the turbines, which would likely destroy the power production facility. Not only is this bad news for power customers, but it is also bad news for those dependent on the Colorado for water. Sending water through the turbines is the default method of releasing water from Lake Powell into the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam. If the turbines are shut off, water must be released through the River Outlet Works, which are large pipes meant for temporary use. In 2023, the River Outlet Works were used to release extra water into the Colorado. Cavitation in the pipes caused damage, and the pipes are not considered a viable method of releasing large volumes of water downstream. If Lake Powell reaches minimum power pool, total inability to release water downriver could result.

Based on their own projections, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) expects the minimum probable inflows to Lake Powell this year to be 3.32 MAF, but plans to release 7.48 MAF from Lake Powell per current operating procedures. If that occurs, BOR forecasts that Lake Powell could fall below minimum power pool by August. This August. Five months from now.

On February 14, the seven states that rely on the Colorado River once again missed a deadline — set by BOR — to find a means of sharing the river’s water. It now appears that BOR must move forward with its own plan to operate Lakes Powell and Mead. If BOR plans to keep Lake Powell above minimum power pool, it will have to release less water from Lake Powell. It will also likely be forced to make massive reductions in the amount of water it releases from Lake Mead to the Lower Basin states. Someone must bear the brunt of those cuts, and without an agreement between the states, BOR is forced to decide who gets water and who does not.

These recent developments — the states’ failure to reach a consensus and a terrible, horrible, no-good-very-bad snow year — are extremely disappointing. Unfortunately, the states that comprise the Colorado River Basin appear closer than ever to knock-down drag-out legal warfare. Large cases between states concerning water commonly take decades to resolve. All the while, the Colorado River will lack the stewardship that it deserves.

Maybe we get a massive storm in May, and all this hand-wringing will have been for nothing. More probably, we will face an exceedingly dry year. The Upper Basin will feel the pain of a dismal snowpack, while the Lower Basin will be hurt by reduced deliveries from Lakes Powell and Mead both this year and next. There is a real possibility that the Central Arizona Project, which currently supplies much of Phoenix and Tucson’s drinking water, could be slashed by more than 75 percent in 2027.

When negotiations fell short last November, the seven states had no idea they were facing a historically dry winter. Last weekend, BOR’s updated forecast was hot off the press, and still no agreement was found. While I am still holding out hope for a seven-state solution, large-scale litigation now appears to be the most likely outcome.

That’s all for this time, thanks for checking in.

Your friend,

Thomas

The Problem

Since 2000, the southwestern United States has fallen into a period of remarkable drought. As a result, the Colorado River and its large reservoirs are overused and teetering on the verge of crisis. If water levels at Lakes Mead and Powell decline further, power generation and water delivery could be shut off. To avert disaster and set the river on a more sustainable path forward, the seven states that share the Colorado’s water supply are negotiating new operational guidelines for Mead and Powell. Giving themselves a multi-year runway, the states and their residents hoped to hammer out a deal in plenty of time to replace existing guidelines, but time is running out, and the states have only grown further apart. The federal government originally set a November 11 deadline for the states to present a general plan. The states blew past the deadline with nothing to present and now have until February 14th (Valentine’s Day! Can’t everyone just kiss and make up?) to deliver a detailed plan to the feds. If they fail again, the federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) will take over to determine the near-term future of the river all on its own. To understand what will happen next, we must understand the incentives at play.

The Incentives

In the Lower Basin, the incentives to strike a deal are obvious and immediate. Lower Basin states rely completely on releases from Lake Mead for water deliveries and cannot risk draining the reservoirs. Additionally, parts of the Southwest rely on Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams for power and will seek to hold water levels high enough to keep the turbines spinning. The Lower Basin needs a good plan, and they need it yesterday.

The Upper Basin, on the other hand, has little immediate incentive to strike a deal. Upper Basin states mostly rely on the natural snowpack in the Colorado headwaters for water supply and thus face no direct consequences if the big reservoirs go empty. Where Lower Basin states make contracts with BOR for water deliveries, most Upper Basin water users simply divert water from the stream into a ditch or canal. The federal government has no authority to shut off those diversions, and Upper Basin states know it. BOR owns and operates a handful of reservoirs in the Upper Basin that could theoretically be drained to prop up Lake Powell, but the feds can only push that button once. Drawing a line in the sand and standing firm may be the best course of action for the Upper Basin, but it complicates the kind of long-term compromise that the entire basin needs.

The largest incentive for the Upper Basin to cooperate on a deal is to avoid lengthy and expensive litigation that will almost certainly occur if the states cannot make a deal. If litigation occurs, the only body with the authority to resolve the issue is the Supreme Court. Under Supreme Court proceedings, a special master would be appointed to determine right from wrong and law from opinion. The process would likely take decades, the outcome growing ever more murky as the case drags on. No state wants to place the fate of its water supply in the hands of an individual appointed by a faraway court.

What Could Happen Next?

Broadly, the two scenarios that appear most likely are: all-out litigation costing millions of dollars and lasting a decade at the very least, or a compromise.

If no deal comes to fruition, litigation becomes the likely outcome. What exactly will trigger the first lawsuit is yet to be seen, but Article III of the Compact will certainly be dragged into the ring. Article III, for those who need a reminder, is the clause of the original Compact which states that “The States of the Upper Division will not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.” If litigation occurs, the courts will probably be asked to determine if Article III obligates the Upper Basin to deliver 7.5 MAF to Lake Powell annually, or if the clause simply functions to keep the Upper Basin from using more water than the 7.5 MAF which was originally allotted to it. The outcome of such a decision could wreak havoc on the losing side.

To avoid litigation, the states must compromise, which has been the intent of the years-long negotiations that are now on the verge of failure. Currently, the Lower Basin is offering to cut 1.5 MAF and split additional cuts 50/50. The Upper Basin agrees that the Lower Basin should cut its use by 1.5 MAF in most years, but wants the Lower Basin to take responsibility for all further cuts as well. Lower Basin negotiators are increasingly frustrated that Upper Basin negotiators refuse to accept any mandatory cuts. Upper Basin negotiators insist that taking any cuts would be unfair, given that the Upper Basin uses only about half the water it is allowed currently. Neither side is wrong, but they are both risking a worst-case scenario if they elect to sue each other.

Perhaps the two basins could find a compromise in which the Lower Basin cuts 1.5 MAF and then takes responsibility for 75 percent of future cuts and compensates the Upper Basin for the remaining 25 percent. I have heard two very smart, very experienced water professionals with deep knowledge of the Colorado suggest such a deal. The Lower Basin would avoid taking on the full brunt of water use reductions, and the Upper Basin would likely avoid cuts of any kind in all but the driest years. As mentioned previously, the states would also avoid years of expensive litigation.

Looking on the bright side, the Lower Basin’s offer to reduce water use by 1.5 MAF annually may be enough. Examining the decline of Lakes Powell and Mead reveals that about 30 MAF of storage has been lost since the current megadrought began in 2000. Over 25 years, that pencils out to roughly 1.2 MAF of loss per year. 1.5 MAF less of Lower Basin use theoretically makes the difference between full reservoirs and empty ones. If so, the additional cuts that the seven states continue to quibble over may only be necessary in abnormally dry years. Hopefully, understanding the impact of the agreed-upon 1.5 MAF of Lower Basin reductions will help guide the states towards a deal.

Why is this so important?

Immediately, the Colorado is important because millions of people depend on it. Abstractly, the Colorado is important because it brings attention to water shortages in the Western US. The West has been dry for a long, long time. It is even drier now, and the demand for water is higher. The ongoing dispute over the Colorado will appear again and again across the West, though probably at a smaller scale.

I have considered at length the importance of the Colorado River negotiations. Does this spat, which many Americans and even Westerners are totally unaware of, carry significance beyond its physical boundaries? I think it does. The Colorado River negotiations not only set the precedent for how we Westerners will settle future interstate water conflicts, but also inform how we can and should think about sharing the scarce natural resources of which we are both owners and stewards.

Going forward, we should resolve disputes with compromise, civility, and a willingness to accept that our preconceived notions may not be entirely founded in reason. The great American writer Wallace Stegner posited that “One of the most difficult operations for imperfect mortals is the making of distinctions, of stopping opinion and belief part way, of accepting qualified ideas.” As we proceed with less water and more people, let us all strive to stop our opinions part way, to encourage the furtherance of qualified ideas, and to banish the lurking divide through compromise.

Thank you all for reading.

Your friend,

Tommy

Quickly, a review of what we know so far:

The US Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) needs to replace its expiring operating guidelines for Lakes Powell and Mead, the nation’s two largest reservoirs. The guidelines expire next year, and BOR must comply with National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations by submitting an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that describes different alternatives for managing the reservoirs. A draft EIS is due early next year, and BOR requested that the seven Colorado River Basin states (the Basin States) submit a plan for reservoir operations to be treated as the preferred alternative in the EIS. BOR’s deadline for the Basin States to come up with a basic plan was November 11th. The Basin States blew past the deadline, leaving the future of the river uncertain. BOR will continue with the EIS process under the assumption that the Basin States will not come to an agreement, leaving the fate of the river in the federal government’s hands. If the Basin States are able to compromise and submit a plan to BOR in the next month or two, I expect that their tardiness will be forgiven.

Guidelines for operating the reservoirs speak volumes about how the entire basin is managed. Regardless of the final decisions made by BOR and the Basin States, the Basin as a whole will have to use less water than they are accustomed to using since there is less water flowing down the Colorado. Some states, we do not yet know which ones, will have to make cuts to their water usage and those cuts will partially be determined by how the reservoirs are managed. Cuts will look different in every state, and predicting the precise effects of cuts is difficult, but taking a look at each state’s relationship with the river can give us a broad view of basin-wide impacts.

Upper Basin

The Upper Basin states rely on Colorado River water to varying degrees, but generally use most of their water rights for agriculture. A smaller but significant portion of water supports municipal demands. The Upper Basin’s use of Colorado River water is already subject to the whims of hydrology, meaning physical water availability is highly variable from year to year. The Upper Basin does its best to remain agile and adaptable to maximize the benefits of its water supplies, but mandatory curtailment of Colorado River water would represent a painful obstacle to water management goals.

Wyoming

Wyoming is allowed fourteen percent of the Upper Basin’s water in a given year, making it a relatively small-volume user of Colorado River water. Wyoming mostly uses its Colorado water for irrigated agriculture, meaning that curtailment would result in fallowed fields and lost income for farmers. In theory, Wyoming’s fourteen percent share of the Upper Basin’s 7.5 million acre-feet (MAF) allotted under the Compact should yield just over 1 MAF. According to a BOR study, Wyoming used an average of 0.42 MAF per year from 2016 to 2020. This is what Upper Basin negotiators are referring to when they assert that the Upper Basin already faces hydrologic shortages and should not be required to make further cuts. Though very few of the 40 million Americans who depend on Colorado River water live in Wyoming, their livelihoods are just as important as those of Colorado farmers, Arizona suburbanites, and all other human beings in the basin.

New Mexico

New Mexico owns the smallest entitlement to CR water among the Upper Basin states at 11.25 percent of the Upper Basin’s yield. New Mexico primarily relies on CR water for agricultural and municipal uses, including water deliveries to its largest cities. New Mexico’s San Juan-Chama Project (SJCP) diverts water from the San Juan, a CR tributary, into the Rio Chama for delivery to cities including Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Cuts to New Mexico’s CR supply could involve the SJCP, which could force cities like Santa Fe to pull more water from non-renewable aquifers. More than half of New Mexico’s CR water is used for irrigated agriculture. New Mexico irrigates far less land than states like Colorado, Arizona, and California, but losing agricultural water could be devastating for rural farming communities.

Utah

Utah uses most of its twenty-three percent allotment of Upper Basin CR water for agriculture. To avoid repeating myself, I’ll refer you to my descriptions of Wyoming and New Mexico for the implications of cuts to ag water. Most of Utah’s population resides along the Wasatch Front (think Salt Lake City and Provo). The Central Utah Project (CUP) exports water from the CR to the Wasatch Front. CUP is junior in priority to many other CR water users and could be curtailed if mandatory cuts are implemented. Native supplies — code for rivers that exist in the watershed where they are used — on the Wasatch Front are already constrained. The Great Salt Lake is drying up, an alarming trend that is harming humans and critters alike. Curtailment of CR water could force Utah municipalities to draw more heavily on their native supplies, further depleting rivers that deliver vital freshwater to the Great Salt Lake.

Colorado

Colorado is the big dog in the Upper Basin, with the right to use 51.75 percent of Upper Basin CR water. Many of Colorado’s oldest and highest-priority water rights are used to grow food. Some of that food, like world-famous Palisade Peaches, is for humans. Most of it is for cows. Colorado also has dozens of trans-basin diversions, some of which export CR water to population centers on the Front Range. Large transbasin diversions like the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, which supplies my drinking water, are relatively low priority and could be impacted by cuts to CR water supplies. This is a major topic for discussion and concern on the Front Range. Colorado’s negotiator, Becky Mitchell, has repeatedly stated that Colorado will accept no mandatory cuts to its CR use.

Upper Basin Summary and a Note on Water Exports

The Upper Basin uses about 70 percent of its CR supplies for agriculture. Another 20 percent goes to water exports for municipalities. The remaining 10 percent is used for mining, power generation, and other industrial activities. Agriculture is economically and culturally indispensable in the Upper Basin. I have learned more about agriculture in the last year than in the rest of my life combined, and my two biggest takeaways are that farmers love farming and that farms need water. I expect Upper Basin farmers to do everything they can to safeguard their water supplies in the coming years.

Take a second to look at the map below. Notice that all of the largest cities within the Upper Basin lie outside of the CR hydrologic boundaries and within the water export areas. Trans-basin diversions have allowed cities to grow using CR supplies, and those cities now rely heavily on CR water. Many of these diversions were built in the mid-1900s and are therefore junior in priority to many other rights. This is a chief concern of Upper Basin water officials, as mandatory cuts to CR water rights could threaten the reliability of water supplies to cities. The same concerns exist in the Lower Basin, where large cities rely on water exports from the CR.

Lower Basin

The Lower Basin is home to the river’s largest water user, California, and the single largest water right on the Colorado. That right belongs to the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), but more on them later. The Lower Basin is also home to Nevada and, therefore, Las Vegas, which relies almost exclusively on CR water to keep taps flowing. Lastly, Arizona’s borders lie entirely within the CR watershed, meaning that the Colorado and its tributaries are the only surface water sources in the entire state. As detailed in the previous installment of this series, the Lower Basin has pledged to make large cuts to its CR water use, but wants the Upper Basin to chip in with cuts of its own.

Nevada

Nevada’s CR water use is pretty simple: Las Vegas. Nevada is allotted 300,000 AF of CR water, and nearly all of it goes to Vegas. Cuts to Nevada’s allotment would mean Las Vegas receiving less water to serve its residents. Las Vegas is already laser-focused on water efficiency and likely has little room to reduce water use through efficiency measures. Fortunately, Vegas uses less water than it is allowed and has breathing room to absorb cuts without impacting deliveries. Since Nevada receives only a tiny portion of the Colorado compared to its Lower Basin neighbors, it won’t be expected to pick up much of the tab when curtailment comes knocking. I’m certain that Nevada’s water officials are negotiating to protect the long-term future of their state’s water supplies, but I don’t expect Las Vegas to fall short on delivering water to its residents any time soon.

California

California owns the largest allotment of Colorado River water at 4.4 MAF. Of this 4.4 MAF, 3.1 MAF belongs to one owner: the Imperial Irrigation District (IID). Farmers in California’s Imperial Valley irrigate some of the world’s most valuable agricultural land and use a staggering volume of water in the process.

Unlike the high-elevation Upper Basin states, California’s Imperial Valley enjoys a year-round growing season. Dry, scorching summers threaten to shrivel crops but also allow for astounding productivity. Mild winters allow farmers to keep farming even during the shortest, coldest days of the year. The result is that crops in the Imperial Valley use far more water than the same crops grown in Upper Basin states. Crop yields are also far higher. A quick survey of agricultural reports indicates that alfalfa grown in the Imperial Valley uses about twice as much water as Colorado alfalfa, and yields twice as much product per acre.

Los Angeles and San Diego also use a significant portion of the state’s Colorado River water. The cities have other water sources and would certainly survive modest curtailment to their Colorado River allotment, but municipalities plan for redundancy in their water systems to avoid shutting off taps, and losing any amount of water hurts. Under the Lower Basin’s proposal for post-2026 operations, California would cut use by 440,000 AF, or exactly 10 percent of its allotment to CR water. This represents a significant but manageable volume of water.

Arizona

More than any other state in the Colorado River Basin, Arizona’s future makes me nervous. Arizona is allowed to use 2.8 MAF of CR water, but has the lowest priority in the Lower Basin. Arizona completed the Central Arizona Project (CAP), a massive canal that transports CR water hundreds of miles to reach Phoenix and Tucson, in 1993. In exchange for federal funding to make the project possible, Arizona accepted a junior position for the CAP, putting them in first in line for curtailment if a water shortage occurred. Now that cuts have come knocking, Arizona has agreed to forego a staggering 780,000 acre-feet annually under the Lower Basin’s plan.

Arizona lies entirely within the Colorado River Basin. Its only surface water comes from the Colorado and its tributaries. When cuts are made, they are absorbed by CAP, meaning reduced deliveries to municipalities. This is a major problem for Arizona, where some communities have been forced to institute moratoriums on new housing developments for lack of water. Arizona’s governor, Katie Hobbs (D), has been vocal about Colorado River negotiations in recent months, calling for federal intervention to protect Arizona’s thirsty tech and agricultural industries.

Lower Basin Summary

The Lower Basin will have to find ways to reduce water use as reservoir levels remain low. Due to Arizona’s junior priority, it will be expected to take the brunt of mandatory water cuts. This will have immediate impacts on Arizona municipalities and has already prompted Arizona to explore options for finding water elsewhere. California will find ways to reduce its CR consumption by 10 percent, and Las Vegas will strive to remain as efficient as possible.

Next Time

I had originally planned to make this the final installment in my River Divided series, but there’s just too much left to digest in one sitting. Instead, I’ll publish a final installment next weekend that wraps up the first three and makes some predictions regarding the river’s future.

Until then, thanks for reading, and enjoy the holidays.

Your friend,

Tommy

I know you’re all up to speed because you read my last newsletter and took copious notes, but I’ll give you a refresher anyway. The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) needs to get National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) approval for the operations of Lakes Mead and Powell. BOR wants the Colorado River Basin states to agree on a plan for managing the reservoirs. That plan would then be dropped in as the Preferred Alternative in BOR’s Environmental Impact Statement. The reservoirs are startlingly low, and the states agree that conservation measures must be stepped up. They disagree, though, on how cuts should be distributed between the Upper and Lower Basins.

Earlier this year, the Upper and Lower Basins submitted separate plans to BOR for consideration. BOR did not include those proposals directly as alternatives in their draft EIS, but did include an alternative that combines aspects of both basins’ plans. BOR also included an alternative strictly aimed at protecting federal infrastructure (dams) and a tweaked version that takes into account stakeholder input, namely from the tribes. Additionally, a group of environmental nonprofits submitted a plan that would focus on operating the reservoirs with ecological health in mind. For this newsletter, I will focus on the two basin proposals and the BOR hybrid. These proposals clarify the opposing views of the Upper and Lower Basins and provide insights into how the debate may be settled.

Let’s do it.

Upper Basin Plan:

The Upper Basin’s plan is straightforward and contains two main components: Lake Powell releases and Lower Basin water use reductions. Releases for the year will be determined by Lake Powell’s storage on October 1, which marks the start of the “water year”. Most entities that manage water view the year in terms of hydrology, not the calendar. By October, all of the water from the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains has drained down to the desert, and most Upper Basin agriculture operations have taken their last delivery of irrigation water. Thus, October 1 is a good time to take stock of water supplies and start planning for the coming year.

Lake Powell Releases:

Under the Upper Basin Plan, Lake Powell releases for the upcoming water year depend on its storage volume on October 1. Releases range from upwards of 10 MAF in wet years all the way down to 6 MAF in extremely dry years. The exact specifications for Lake Powell releases under the Upper Basin plan are shown in the table below.

On October 1st, 2025, Lake Powell was 29 percent full. Under the Upper Basin plan, about 6.3 MAF would be released from Lake Powell into Lake Mead in Water Year 2026 (10/1/2025-9/30/2026). For context, let’s recall the full extent of Lower Basin demands which rely on releases from Lake Mead. California, Arizona and Nevada each want their full allotments, which total 7.5 MAF under the Colorado River Compact. Additionally, Mexico is owed 1.5 MAF under treaty obligations. Throw in 0.5 MAF of losses to evaporation and seepage, and we’re looking at a cool 9.5 MAF. If 6.3 MAF is released from Lake Powell into Lake Mead, and 9.5 MAF is released from Lake Mead to Lower Basin users, Lake Mead’s storage will decrease drastically. What does the Upper Basin propose to do about that?

Lake Mead releases and Lower Basin reductions:

Under the Upper Basin plan, Lake Mead operations would be determined based on combined Lake Powell and Lake Mead storage levels. The Upper Basin proposes a “trigger”, which is a simple ratio that measures current water storage in the reservoirs against total storage capacity. The trigger determines the volume of water by which the Lower Basin must reduce their use. When the reservoirs are happy, no cuts are needed. As the reservoirs drain, cuts could go as high as 3.9 MAF, more than Arizona and Nevada’s allotments combined.

I calculated the 2026 Water Year trigger to be about 16 percent, which would call for 2 MAF of reductions in the Lower Basin. That is a huge, huge cut. Two million acre feet of water is enough to supply millions of households or irrigate hundreds of thousands of acres of productive farmland. Taking even a fraction of that volume of water away from any state in either basin would have massive, immediate effects on people’s lives. This is precisely why the negotiations are so tense and compromise is so difficult.

Why could this plan work?

The Upper Basin Plan’s strength lies in its simplicity. It takes a straightforward approach to evaluating storage levels and adjusting deliveries to the Lower Basin accordingly. The trigger mechanism safeguards reservoir levels and is easy to calculate. If the Upper Basin Plan were agreed upon and implemented, Lower Basin states would have a clear picture of their available supplies each October and could plan accordingly for the upcoming irrigation season. Upper Basin states would take no mandatory cuts under the plan, which would make water users in the Upper Basin happy.

Why can’t the states agree on it?

The elephant in the room regarding the Upper Basin plan is that Upper Basin states would take no mandatory cuts to their water use. Based on the negotiations between the states up until this point, I expect this to be a non-starter. Additionally, the Upper Basin plan determines water shortages based on storage in Lakes Powell and Mead only, leaving the large reservoirs in the Upper Basin out of the picture. The Lower Basin looks at storage levels in the entire basin, a sticking point that will be difficult to compromise on.

The Lower Basin Plan:

The Lower Basin Plan also focuses on Lake Powell releases and water use reductions, but uses different criteria to determine how much water should be released. Rather than using only Lake Mead and Lake Powell’s storage to determine releases and reductions, the Lower Basin plan looks at storage in all large BOR reservoirs in the basin. Additionally, the Lower Basin plan proposes that the Upper and Lower Basins split reductions equally if more cuts are needed after the Lower Basin reduces their use by 1.5 MAF.

Lake Powell Releases:

The Upper Basin proposes to base Lake Powell releases based on total storage in Lake Powell and three Upper Basin reservoirs 9Blue Mesa, Flaming Gorge, and Navajo) along with the 3-year rolling average of Upper Basin consumptive use. The idea here is that when the reservoir levels in the Upper Basin are high, Lake Powell can release a large volume of water down to Lake Mead. As reservoir levels decrease, releases decrease with them. When total Upper Basin storage is in the wide range between 30% and 80% full, Lake Powell releases would be based on Upper Basin use. Lake Powell releases would decrease in line with Upper Basin use, all the way down to 7 MAF. Once reservoir levels drop below 30%, releases would be whittled down in line with storage capacity to a minimum of 6 MAF.

If that last paragraph was a bit nebulous, don’t worry. I had to read the technical attachment to the Lower Basin’s plan to understand what was going on. There are a lot of moving parts. The main point to grasp here is that the Lower Basin proposes to base Lake Powell releases on Upper Basin storage and actual Upper Basin use. In theory, this would keep operations agile and responsive to hydrologic shortages (read: dry years) in the Upper Basin.

Water Use Reductions:

The Lower Basin plan would determine reservoir operations based on total system storage, not just storage in Lakes Mead and Powell. Under the Lower Basin plan, no cuts to water use would be made until total storage drops to 69%. The Lower Basin would then begin making cuts, which would increase up to 1.5 MAF at 58% storage. Cuts would level off at 1.5 MAF until the reservoirs drop to 38% storage, at which point further cuts would be made. These cuts, though, would be split between the Upper and Lower Basins. Cuts would increase up to an additional 2.4 MAF as reservoir levels drop to zero.

Currently, total system storage sits at approximately 37%. Under the Lower Basin plan, the Upper Basin would take virtually no cuts, while the Lower Basin would cut its use by a hair over 1.5 MAF.

The plan goes on to discuss voluntary conservation mechanisms that both basins could use to prop up reservoir levels in dry years, but I won’t go into detail on that aspect of the plan.

Why could this plan work?

The Lower Basin plan allows the reservoirs to operate based on the full picture of the Colorado River Basin’s hydrology. By bringing all the large reservoirs into play, BOR can operate the reservoirs dynamically and use all the tools at its disposal to maximize water deliveries while responding to hydrological shortages. The Lower Basin recognizes that it must take a larger share of water use reductions and shields the Upper Basin from taking cuts until storage drops to very low levels.

Why can’t the states agree?

The Upper Basin has signaled that they are strongly opposed to any plan that requires mandatory water use reductions for Upper Basin states. The Upper Basin does not have massive reservoirs that can store water in wet years and deliver it in dry years, so Upper Basin states take cuts due to natural hydrology in most years. The Upper Basin has never come close to using its full 7.5 MAF allotted to it in the Compact, and feels that it should not have to take cuts when it already uses less than it is allowed. This will be a difficult issue to resolve.

In review, the two basins agree on quite a bit, including the following:

• Water use reductions should be based on actual storage, not 24-month forecasts.

• Lake Powell releases should range from 6 MAF to over 10 MAF, depending on how much water is available.

• Water use reductions of up to 1.5 MAF should be made in most years in the Lower Basin.

• Water use reductions of up to 3.9 MAF should be made in the driest of years.

But they disagree on a couple of key questions:

• Should reservoir releases and water use reductions be based on Lakes Mead and Powell only or on total system storage?

• Should the Lower Basin be responsible for all mandatory water use reductions, or should the Upper Basin have to take mandatory cuts in addition to hydrologic shortages?

There is no right answer, but hopefully a compromise can be made. If not, BOR takes over.

In the final installment of this series, I’ll go over the outcome of the November 11 deadline. If the states can compromise, I’ll write about their plan and what it means for each state. If not, I’ll go over BOR’s hybrid plan from their draft EIS, which was published last year. Expect that sometime around Thanksgiving. Until then, take it easy.

Your friend,

Thomas

In case you missed my last newsletter or are new to Cash Flows (welcome, by the way), this newsletter is the first in a three-part series that I am publishing to explain the high-stakes negotiations currently underway concerning management of Colorado River water. Before we dive in, let’s get a few things out of the way:

• This newsletter is entirely separate from my work at WestWater Research. Nothing in this newsletter should be taken as WestWater’s opinion.

• I am writing this to shed light on a complex issue, not to argue for one side or another. If anything in this newsletter sounds partisan to you, please understand that was not my intent.

• I have no horse in this race. I am from California, and I live in Colorado. I would like to see a solution that works for everybody and that all parties can agree on.

Now, let’s get into it.

What Is Actually Being Negotiated?

Great question. It took a lot of background reading for me to gain clarity on this issue, and I’d like to start by correcting a misstatement I made in my last newsletter about the Colorado River Compact. I wrote that the Compact itself is expiring in 2026, which is false. The Compact has no expiration date and will stand as law unless it is renegotiated, which is unlikely in the near term. The basis of the current Colorado River negotiations is the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that the US Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) must submit to continue operating Lakes Powell and Mead as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

BOR last went through the NEPA process in 2007 for reasons that are explained later in this newsletter. Before submitting their EIS in 2007, BOR asked the Colorado River Basin states to submit a plan for managing the reservoirs. The states negotiated a plan, which BOR used as the Preferred Alternative in their EIS. That plan has guided reservoir operations since 2007, but it expires in 2026. In preparing a new EIS, BOR is again asking the states to submit a plan for the Preferred Alternative. This time around, though, consensus is proving elusive.

In ongoing negotiations, the Lower Basin (California, Arizona, and Nevada) and Upper Basin (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming) are arguing over who should cut back on water use to maintain healthy levels in Lakes Powell and Mead (I’ll refer to Powell and Mead by name or collectively as “the reservoirs”). The BOR would prefer that the Basin States submit a plan for maintaining reservoir levels that can be used for post-2026 reservoir operations. The states have until November 11th to agree on a draft plan and notify BOR that the plan exists. They will then have until February to finalize the details of the draft plan and submit the plan in full to BOR.

I know that the last few paragraphs are dense and complex. I recommend reading the rest of this newsletter to gather the necessary context, then reading over those paragraphs again.

How Did We Get Here?

When the seven states signed the Colorado River Compact, they also drew the dimensions of the battlefield where future conflict would be settled. As drought struck the Southwest in the early 2000s, disagreements between the Upper and Lower Basins bubbled to the surface. Those disagreements have come to a head, and neither side wants to blink first.

The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) operates most of the large reservoirs in the Colorado River basin, making its activities crucial to high-volume water users like farms and cities. Those large reservoirs include Lakes Mead and Powell, built specifically to regulate the Colorado’s flow for the benefit of Lower Basin users. Both reservoirs remained at healthy levels until the early 2000s, when the current mega-drought began.

Before delving into the nitty-gritty of the ongoing negotiations between the seven states, it is essential to understand why the reservoirs are important. The Colorado, like many of the West’s great rivers, has wildly fluctuating hydrology. It is a silty, unpredictable, volatile, and beautiful river. Big dams provide water storage, hydropower production, and flood control. Storage allows Lower Basin users to receive dependable deliveries on a dependable schedule rather than a constant diet of flood and drought. Lower Basin states also buy energy generated by the dams’ hydropower facilities, making reservoirs a critical component of the Southwest’s energy infrastructure. Low reservoir levels mean losing power generation first, followed by a complete inability to deliver water. This would be a nightmare scenario for cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas.

As reservoir levels dropped in the early oughts, the Lower Basin states and BOR recognized that they had to act quickly to prevent the loss of hydropower production and, in the worst-case scenario, the ability to deliver water. Their solution came in the form of BOR’s 2007 Interim Guidelines for Reservoir Operations (2007 Guidelines), which established mandatory curtailment of water delivery in water shortage scenarios. The 2007 Guidelines called for water delivery cuts to Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico in water shortage years. California was able to avoid cuts because it has the oldest, or most “senior”, water rights in the Lower Basin.

When the 2007 guidelines were created, a shortage had never occurred. In the decade following the guidelines’ publication, no shortage was declared. Even so, reservoir levels dwindled, and the threat of mandatory curtailment loomed. In 2021, the news that the Lower Basin states had feared for years finally broke: BOR had determined that 2022 would be a water-shortage year. In each year since 2022, a shortage has been declared and cuts have been made to water users in the Lower Basin. The cuts have kept the turbines spinning in Hoover and Glen Canyon dams, but reservoir levels remain near all-time lows.

The 2007 Guidelines expire in 2026, and the Lower Basin recognizes that the cuts they agreed to make in 2007 are not enough to stop the reservoirs from draining further. To solve the issue, the Lower Basin is promising to cut back further and asking the Upper Basin to chip in. The Upper Basin feels that natural hydrology already forces them to cut back on water use and, therefore, is extremely reluctant to accept further curtailment. The exact numbers concerning water use in the two basins are the subject of intense debate, but the Lower Basin generally uses all the water that they are allowed, while the Upper Basin generally does not.

The Lower Basin and BOR have extremely strong incentives to keep the reservoirs at healthy levels. By collaborating to create water shortage guidelines in 2007, the States and BOR hoped they could avoid large-scale disagreement between the Upper and Lower Basins. Unfortunately, the 2007 Guidelines did not foresee drastic degradation of hydrologic conditions beyond what, at the time, was considered extreme drought. Now, the states must figure out what to do with the assumption that historic drought may be the new normal.

Upper vs. Lower

At first glance, this appears to be a Lower Basin issue. The Lower Basin depends on the reservoirs for water; the Upper Basin does not. Lower Basin states buy electricity produced by the dams; the Upper Basin does not. Lower Basin states usually consume at least as much water as they are allowed under the compact; Upper Basin states do not. So, why are Upper Basin states involved at all?

The answer is that the Upper and Lower Basins disagree on a clause of the Compact that establishes guardrails on how the two basins will share Colorado River water. Article III of the Compact states that “The States of the Upper Division will not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.” This roughly translates to: “The Upper Basin will not prevent the Lower Basin from receiving the 7.5 million acre-feet (MAF) per year on average promised to it in the Compact.” Refer to the map earlier in this article for the location of Lee’s Ferry. It is treated as the dividing line between the two basins. If the Upper Basin refuses to make cuts, and flow at Lee’s Ferry drops too low, it could trigger a “Compact Call,” in which the Lower Basin sues the Upper Basin for violating the Compact. The terminology of “Compact Call” derives from a common practice in Western water law in which a senior user “calls” on a junior water user to cut back when insufficient water is available for both users.

If the seven states can agree on a way to maintain reservoir levels, it could save everyone years of bitter litigation, but interpreting the Compact is sticky business. The way the Upper Basin sees it, the “Compact Call” relies on a false interpretation of Article III. The Compact does not say “75MAF must be delivered to Lee’s Ferry,” it says the Upper Basin must not cause less than 75MAF to be delivered to Lee’s Ferry. By the Upper Basin’s logic, as long as they don’t use more water than they’re allowed, they cannot be the cause of a Lower Basin water shortage. From the Lower Basin’s point of view, the Upper Basin is obligated to deliver the 75MAF stated in the compact, full stop. And so, we have reached a stalemate.

There are a lot of big numbers being thrown around, and I recognize that millions of acre-feet of water is not easy to conceptualize. I could put these numbers in terms of swimming pools or football fields or solo cups or any number of meaningless metrics, but the truth is that remembering the numbers is nowhere near as important as grasping the implications of cutting back on water use. I’ll go into more detail on the potential impacts of mandatory water use curtailment in each state in my next newsletter, but cutting back on water use in a densely populated and agriculturally productive desert causes a lot of pain. Farmers could lose productive acreage or entire farms. Cities could find themselves in water shortages. Hydropower facilities could be shut off, putting stress on energy supplies. Nobody wants to cut back, yet everyone must.

What Now?

November 11th is only nine days away, and the states have not indicated that they are close to an agreement. That said, frequent meetings between all states are taking place, and everyone would much rather settle on a plan than leave the entire dispute to BOR’s discretion. I’ll be crossing my fingers for the next week or so, hoping to see an agreement that all seven states can live with.

In the next installment of this series, which I’ll publish next weekend, I’ll explain the proposals on the table and why the states haven’t been able to agree on any of them. I’ll also provide an update on the status of negotiations in the final days before the deadline.

If you’re a sicko like me and can’t get enough of this high-stakes water drama, check out this article by Shannon Mullane of the Colorado Sun. The article, which I think is very well-written, goes over the specific sticking points that are holding up an agreement between the states.

Please ask me questions. If there are pieces of this story that are confusing or spark your curiosity, let me know so I can do a deeper dive.

Cheers,

Thomas

Since my last newsletter, I’ve been settling into life in Fort Collins and getting to know some truly wonderful people. My new home is filled with 20-somethings starting their careers, taking risks, and enjoying life. I feel quite lucky to be one of them.

I recognize that this is only the second newsletter I’ve published this year. It turns out that learning the intricacies of Colorado’s water markets requires nearly all the time and processing power I have. Now that I’ve been able to catch a breath, I plan to begin writing about water issues again in earnest, starting with the Colorado River Compact. Before I dive into water talk, here’s what I’ve been up to:

In the spring and early summer, I spent most of my free time floating on the Cache La Poudre River near town and teaching myself how to row a boat in technical whitewater. Once the river levels dropped too low for boating, I refocused on backpacking, trail running, and mountain biking. With autumn’s arrival, I expect to find myself back on the water, this time with a fly rod in hand.

My summer was full of mini-adventures, but one in particular stands out from the rest. The Maroon Bells, a collection of rust-colored peaks near the town of Aspen, are said to be the most photographed place in Colorado. The area is extremely popular, and overnight camping in the wilderness surrounding the peaks is only allowed with the proper permit, which typically sells out months in advance. I figured I’d have to wait until next summer to try my luck securing permits for the classic Four Pass Loop backpacking route, but my friend Mik had other ideas. What if, Mik thought, we avoid the need for permits by doing the whole loop in a day?

A few weeks after forming our plan, Mik, Savanna (a friend and coworker of mine), and I woke to chilly, damp air on a Forest Service road west of Aspen. We broke camp under moonlight and changed into shorts and running shoes. My watch read 2:15 AM. The three of us donned hydration vests and headlamps at the trailhead and set off into the mountains. The Bells loomed above, but were invisible in the pre-dawn blackness.

Four Pass Loop is just as it sounds: a loop with four distinct passes traversing the heart of some of the country’s most breathtaking terrain. The trail begins at roughly 9,500 feet of elevation, and the highest pass tops out at around 12,500’. Most of the trail is distinctly uphill or downhill, which makes for grueling climbs, thrilling descents, and about 7,500’ of elevation gain. We reached the top of the first pass in the dark and sprinted downhill as light gathered in the sky. The second pass came and went easily, and we had traveled a dozen miles by mid-morning. At the bottom of the third pass, the mileage began to take its toll. Mik’s legs were ready to call it quits, and the giddy chatter that characterized the first half of the day had subsided. The final 10 miles of trail took us nearly 8 hours, but at last we arrived at Maroon Lake, greeted by the Bells. 12 hours and 27 miles after we began our day, the three of us sat on the asphalt in the trailhead parking lot and sipped gatorade while minivans zipped to and fro, unloading gaggles of tourists who blinked in the afternoon sun. I felt simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated, and ever since, I have been dreaming of even bigger days in the mountains.

Moving on to water:

The southwestern United States has a remarkable lack of water. The region’s one major river, the Colorado, tumbles from the frozen peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico, making life possible in what is otherwise some of the hottest and most arid land in North America. Flowing through parts of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California, and having tributaries in New Mexico and Wyoming, the Colorado’s flow has been caught in a 10-way tug of war for over 100 years. The document that divvies up the water expires in 2026, making this the most interesting and crucial period for western water policy in over a century.

In 1922, the United States passed the Colorado River Compact, which laid out the guidelines for managing the Colorado River’s water. The seven states that use water from the Colorado and its tributaries agreed to split the river’s total flow equally between the Upper Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah) and the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, and Nevada). Additionally, 30 Native American tribes own water rights totaling nearly one quarter of the Colorado’s flow. The compact also mandated that a portion of the river’s flow be delivered to Mexico. I view these parties (seven states, the tribes, and Mexico) as nine of the ten that will determine the future rules of the river. The tenth is the federal government, more specifically, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR). The BOR manages the Colorado’s reservoirs, which include Lake Mead and Lake Powell, respectively the largest and second-largest reservoirs in the nation.

When the compact was written, the Colorado River Basin was experiencing historically wet conditions. The result was an optimistic estimate that the Colorado’s average flow was 15 million acre-feet annually. From 1950 to 1999, that estimate proved relatively accurate as the river averaged about 14.5 million acre-feet per year. Since 2000, though, drought has gripped the region, and average flows have dropped to 12.5 million acre feet annually. Many experts forecast further diminishing flows as the climate warms. The major cities that rely on the Colorado (Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Denver) are among the fastest-growing in the nation. The compact that has governed the river expires in 2026, and the seven states, the tribes, Mexico, and the feds have to answer the following question: How do we redistribute the Colorado’s water fairly as supply dwindles?

I’ll break my coverage of the compact into three parts. First, I’ll explore how we got here. What is the reasoning behind the compact’s original structure? Does the same reasoning provide any value today? How did we allow the river to become so over-allocated? Has one state been favored over the others?

Next, I’ll look at where we go from here. What does each basin want? What does each state stand to lose, and how are they negotiating to prevent that? What are the proposed solutions and what would their effects be?

Third, I’ll break down the outcome of the states’ negotiation. If they provide a draft plan, I’ll explain what the river will look like in the future. If they do not, I’ll discuss how the BOR might proceed with rewriting the compact and what the effects might be.

I’ll publish Part I in mid-October, Part II in early November, and Part III around Thanksgiving. If you have questions about water, go ahead and leave them in the comments so I can add them to my list of topics for future newsletters. I’m wishing all of you some time outside in the beautiful conditions that October provides. If I’m lucky, maybe we’ll bump into each other on the river or the trails.

Yours,

Tommy

I’ll cut to the chase: I’m a corporate monkey now. I sit at a desk and populate spreadsheets. I make graphs. I read memos. I wear a collared shirt and say, “Do we have any new comps from the Grande?” More surprising than any of that, I did this on purpose.

What I’m Doing:

I moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, where I’ve grown accustomed to 60-degree temperature swings in a matter of days. One morning, my damp hair freezes solid on my walk to work. The next evening I go for a run in a T-shirt and shorts. It’s nice.

I moved here to join WestWater Research, a company I identified last summer as the next place I wanted to work. My colleagues are engineers and economists with a passion for water resources and a long track record of getting shit done. They are skiers, cyclists, runners, and anglers. Together, we track water markets, perform valuations of water assets, and advise municipalities on their future water plans. It’s fascinating work and I feel like I’ve been standing in front of a firehose of information for the last two months.

Outside of work, I explore the local trails on my mountain bike, play some hockey, and go fishing or skiing when I feel compelled.

What I’m Reading:

92 in the Shade:

This is my third lap through the pages of Tom McGuane’s best novel. The more I read McGuane the more I’m able to live in his world and yield to the peculiarities of his language. I particularly enjoy his apparent fondness for sending his characters on melodramatic inner monologues. In one scene, young protagonist Tom Skelton is feeling jealous and lashing out, and McGaune describes his sour mood:

“When the shining city is at hand, a special slum will be built for me and my meanness. I will be the person, if that’s what I am, in the slum; there will be one of everything; one rat, one tin can. The shining city will beckon in the distance. The shadow of the Bakunin monument will not quite stretch to my door. In the evening, the sound of happy syndicalist badminton finals will be borne to me on a sweet wind that sours as it enters my slum. I will behave poorly.”

Funny, right?

What I’m Writing:

Well, this, mostly. I do have a couple of articles in the works, but no published writing since my last feature story for Chasing Silver. The next time my name is in a magazine, you’ll be the first to know - I promise.

In the meantime, I plan to use this newsletter to explore water issues in the West. Water is our most precious resource and, throughout much of the West, it is quite scarce. Water changes hands - along with large sums of money - every day. The arid regions of the West allocate and reallocate water in line with their priorities, vying to squeeze maximum value from each drop. I feel strongly that citizens of the West should have a basic understanding of water use and history. Water can be a proxy for wealth and power, not to mention that it keeps us alive. Also, it is a public good. The right to use water can be bought and sold, but water itself belongs to the people.

In each of my newsletters this year, I’ll choose an important concept relating to Western water to break down. If you have questions about water or concepts you’d like me to go over, please ask! For now, we’ll start with the very foundation of Western water law.

Broadly, Western water is governed by two basic principles: beneficial use and prior appropriation. I’ve broken the two principles down below, and they should either give you a sufficient refresher on Western water or get you up to speed, depending on your familiarity with the subject.

Beneficial Use:

Beneficial use is exactly as it sounds. One must prove that they are putting water to some kind of use to appropriate it. Common uses of water in the West include irrigation, mining, livestock, and municipal use. With so much focus on water conservation in today’s world, it is hard to understand why water policy would encourage exploitation over moderation, but incentivizing water use was a crucial strategy for settling the West. Dangling the carrot of free land and water made homesteading in hostile, arid territory seem far more appealing.

In recent years, laws have been amended to allow water appropriators to “use” water for instream flows by simply leaving it in the river. Still, most water is not used for environmental purposes, and you should keep in mind that Western water law’s unofficial slogan is “use it or lose it.” If you don’t use your water, somebody else will.

Prior Appropriation:

Prior appropriation means that the first party to put a water source to beneficial use has the ultimate (senior) right to that water. Any subsequent (junior) parties who use water from the same source may only do so after the senior right holder has been allowed their full allotment.

For example:

Cowpoke Jim brings 50 head of cattle to Cloud Valley in 1839. He digs a ditch from Cloud Creek and diverts 10 cubic feet per second (CFS) to his homestead for his cattle. The local water authority decrees Jim a right for 10CFS of Cloud Creek with a priority date of 1839. In 1840, Pickaxe Billy discovers gold in Cloud Valley and starts chipping away at the mountainside. He diverts 10 CFS of Cloud Creek to his mine to flush away the tailings. The local water authority grants Billy a right to 10 CFS of Cloud Creek water with a priority date of 1840, making his right junior to Cowpoke Jim’s. In late summer, Cloud Creek usually runs at about 30 CFS, providing more than enough water for Jim and Billy, but 1845 is a dry year. By August, Cloud Creek is running at a meager 9 CFS. Since Jim holds the senior water right, he is entitled to divert all 9 CFS and leave Billy with nothing. The gold will have to stay in the mountain for now.

In summary, the first user to appropriate water from a stream has the ultimate right to water from that stream. They must, however, put the full allotment of their water to use, or the quantity of water they hold rights to may be reduced. If you have to read this a few times before it makes sense, that’s ok. If you have questions, ask away! I’ll do my best to answer whatever you all throw at me.

Before I wrap up this installment, I’d like to thank each and every one of you who reads these newsletters. I’m deeply flattered that you all take an interest in what I’m up to, and the kind words that I have received about this newsletter make the hours I dedicate to it even more gratifying. As a reminder, I do not expect anyone to make a financial contribution to this little project, but I’ve left the option open for those who want to contribute, and I’m very thankful for the support of my paid subscribers.

That’s all for this time, I’m already looking forward to putting together the next edition.

Your friend,

Thomas

The leaves are finally dropping from the trees here in Oakland, reminding me that the timing of the seasons varies greatly across the hemisphere. In Alaska, this happened in August.

What I’m Up To:

I’m back at home regrouping from a long summer of work and a bit of travel. My days as a fishing guide are (probably) behind me and I’m taking some time to decide what I’d like my next chapter to be. This period of my life looks and feels a lot like a mini-retirement, which can be quite fun or somewhat unsettling depending on the day. No matter what comes next, I’ll continue to write.

In October, I went to Japan for two weeks with a good friend of mine from high school, Alexander Blau. We spent a few days in Tokyo, then took a series of trains to Ise, a midsize coastal town outside Nagoya. We came to Ise to walk the Ise-Ji, a hundred-ish-mile route along the Pacific coast that begins and ends at two of Japan’s most important Shinto shrines: Ise Jingu and Hayatama Taisha. There are hundreds of smaller shrines along the way. Some are the size of a mailbox, others the size of a city park. The shrines were fascinating, and certainly educated me on Shinto and Zen Buddhist culture, but I mostly came to this area to walk through the forests.

The following is a selection of photographs from the trek with a quick recap of each day. I hope it sparks your curiosity about this rarely visited sliver of Japan.

Day 1:

We leave Ise and wind along streets and highways, slowly fading from city to suburbs to villages. We grow accustomed to the charming, quiet, somewhat boring nature of these small towns of mostly very old residents. Our host sits with us at dinner and shows us a movie about the trail, sheepishly admitting that, yes, he has a brief cameo in the film.

Day 2:

We spend our first few hours walking the highway, then finally break off into the mountains on a steep, crude trail cut by heavy equipment. Land crabs scuttle across our path and the road noise falls away. Later, we notice trees swaying on the far side of a river and realize that a group of monkeys is playing in the branches. After 22 miles, we arrive at our inn and are invited to a barbecue by some local kids who work at the zoo. We attend, then bow out around 8 pm, exhausted.

Day 3:

Morning showers turn into biblical rain and powerful wind gusts. We nearly bail to a train station but decide to stick it out and hope the next inn has a washing machine and dryer. Before we embark on the day’s longest trail section, a pair of police officers stop to warn us of bears, which are apparently a problem on the trail. I assure them that I know how to travel safely in bear country, and we hit the trail under ominous skies. We see no bears or other wildlife and arrive at our decidedly fancy inn. They have a washer and dryer, so the trek may go on.

Day 4:

In this part of the country, every meal is principally fish and rice, and both of us begin to crave burgers and ice cream.

Day 5:

We hike almost entirely on trail, earning views of the coast at the top of every pass, then descending to small fishing towns. Up to this point, the trek has mostly taken place under a thick layer of clouds, but the sun breaks through as we reach the highest pass. The Pacific sparkles, and we enjoy rice triangles and Japanese candy. Conversation flows on the descent. We buy beers at a convenience store down the road from the inn, a gorgeous, 75-year-old house that sits on a bluff above a small bay.

Day 6:

We have 4,000 feet of climbing to do, and Blau’s leg is bugging him. He grits his teeth and conquers the first pass, and his leg relaxes as it warms up. It’s a long day, but we eventually arrive in Kumano. From here, the rest of the trek is a 15-mile strut down the beach to Shingu. It feels like we’ve made it.

Day 7:

We get a late start and stop for lunch at an Italian restaurant along the way. The views over the Pacific are both beautiful and plentiful, but for much of the day we walk along the highway. By the time we reach Shingu, we are both ready to rest our legs and head back to the comforts of Tokyo. We eat at a French restaurant (there is surprisingly good European fare across Japan) and buy victory snacks at a convenience store. Upon completing the trek, I am glad to have done it, but feel that the region would be better explored on a bike. Maybe I’ll return someday.

Important Happenings:

Salmon Return to the Upper Klamath:

Many of you–especially those who live in California–have probably seen headlines about the salmon arriving in the Oregon portion of the Klamath River. The Klamath is the subject of the largest dam removal project of all time, with four dams removed starting in late 2023. Already, fall-run Chinook salmon have returned to the upper watershed, which has been inaccessible to them for over 100 years. These Chinook remind us that salmon are unbelievably resilient creatures. If we can stay out of their way, they will swim past sharks, sea lions, orca, bears, and waterfalls to sow the seeds of their progeny. Then they will die in the very gravel where they hatched, allowing the ecosystem to absorb the nutrients that the salmon brought with them from the Pacific. The Klamath is now the second (yes, there is only one other river in California with no dams) free-flowing river in California and the best hope for salmon recovery in the state. Read more here.

Good Samaritan Mine Cleanup:

According to Trout Unlimited, the United States’ 500,000 abandoned mines negatively impact 110,000 miles of our streams, including 22,000 miles of trout and salmon streams and 57,000 miles of streams in important drinking water watersheds. Under previous legislation, organizations that aim to clean up point-source mine pollution can be treated as polluters an held liable for Clean Water Act violations. Now, the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act of 2024 gives legal protections to organizations like Trout Unlimited so that they can use their expertise and fundraising to clean up streams. Just yesterday, the bill passed the House and now sits on President Biden’s desk. Another small victory for our finned friends. Learn more here.

Eel River Dam Removal:

I’ve written about the Eel in my newsletter before, but Chasing Silver Magazine recently published a story that I wrote about the Eel and its iconic steelhead. Buy the entire issue here, or drop me a line and I’ll send over a PDF of my article.

A Few Recommendations:

Japanese Baseball:

America’s pastime is better in Japan. Each team has a choreographed cheering section, each player has a personalized chant sung by their fans, and beer girls walk around the stadium with kegs on their backs, pouring out foamy Kirin and Sapporo for the equivalent of four dollars per. The game I attended also featured kindergarteners dressed as sushi rolls running a footrace in left field. Take me back to the Tokyo Dome.

Stretching Until it Really, Really Hurts:

Pick a stretch. Breathe deeply and stretch a little further with every exhale. Keep going until it really, really hurts. Identifying a benchmark can help, for instance, I’ll touch my toes and then keep stretching until the backs of my wrists touch the ground. I am not a flexible man. It really f*cking hurts. But I feel great afterward, and I am noticeably more flexible than I was when I started doing this a few weeks ago.

Remote: A Lava Creek Lodge Story

For those who are unaware, I’ve spent the past two summers working at a fly fishing lodge in the Alaskan wilderness. This summer, we were lucky enough to have talented filmmaker Dominic Bruno join us for two weeks to make a promotional video for the lodge. Even if you never plan to fish in Alaska, its worth a watch just to see the incredible wilderness that I’ve been lucky enough to call home. Watch the film here.

This was a long one. If you’re still reading, you must be a big fan of mine. I appreciate it. I’m a big fan of yours, too. Enjoy your holidays, and find an excuse to spend some time outside.

Yours,

Tommy

As I write this, my tent is being battered by frigid wind and rain blowing in off the Bering Sea. The outside temperature is 48 degrees. Welcome to summertime on the Alaska Peninsula.

What I’m Up To:

I’m living in a small yet sophisticated camp called Lava Creek Lodge a few miles from the Bering Sea. I guide clients from around the world on a wild river, chasing salmon with a fly rod. It is the strangest, hardest, and most thrilling job I’ve ever had.

Our fishing season revolves around the salmon’s calendar, which means that Chinook season is wrapping up and Coho season is only a few weeks away. In the interim, we will fish for trout and dolly varden that hover behind salmon redds and gobble up stray eggs.

On any given day here one might see bears, wolves, caribou, moose, porcupines, beavers, eagles, foxes, otters, minks, sandhill cranes, innumerable shorebirds, songbirds, and waterfowl along with the tens of thousands of salmon that pour into the river for months on end. The Alaska Peninsula truly has some of the most stunning wilderness left on Earth and I do my best not to take any of it for granted, even when southwest wind patterns hold temperatures in the forties while the sun is shrouded by an impenetrable layer of marine fog.

 Important Happenings:

Sites Reservoir:

California recently received funding from the federal government to build two dams for winter water storage on ephemeral tributaries to the Sacramento River. In an era of dam removal, new dam projects in the western US are eyed with immense scrutiny by environmentalists, and for good reason. Dams interrupt natural ecosystem processes ranging from sediment transport to fish migration and, in some cases, can kill off entire runs of salmon and steelhead. Proponents of the Sites Reservoir say it is a safeguard against the diminishing snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and that the dams will actually help the river cope with climate change. Opponents argue that the dam will deprive the river of crucial winter flows and that much of the water will be used for export crops. High Country News published a great explainer recently which my great uncle Mark shared with me. The article is linked here.

Seine River Pollution:

River health is in the news these days, and not for the fishy reasons that I usually write about. With the opening ceremony just days away, the Seine River may be unfit for use in the Olympics due to unhealthy levels of E. coli found in recent tests. Despite the data, Paris’ mayor took a dip in the river last week and deemed the water “exquisiste”. I doubt the athletes are convinced.

A Few Recommendations:

Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve:

Lava Creek lodge sits in the shadow of Mt. Aniakchak, a massive volcano that blew its top half off roughly three thousand years ago and now exists as an elevated crater about 6 miles across. The crater is home to a lake, which drains out of the volcano and into the pacific ocean. The lake receives a run of sockeye salmon. That’s right, there are salmon spawning in a volcano this very moment. The entire mountain and much of the neighboring Pacific coastline are protected as a national monument. On the way back from a day of fishing on a neighboring river, my boss, Phil, flew right through the crater’s center. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

Long Tail Mud Motors:

Nearly all fishing camps in Alaska run jet motors in the state’s shallow, braided rivers. Our home river, though, is so thoroughly composed of sand that we can’t run jets as they would suck up sand and be rendered useless. Instead, we use propellers attached to a long shaft and powered by a lawn mower engine. The tiller can be moved on a vertical plane as well as a horizontal plane, allowing the boat driver to lift the propeller out of the water as he hydroplanes over a sand bar. Operating the motors on this river is highly technical and one of my favorite parts of the job.

The Merlin Bird App:

I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a staggering volume of bird life out here, but I find interesting birds literally everywhere I go. Wherever I’m headed, I download the bird pack for the area on the Merlin App, which allows me to identify birds by sight or sound without needing service or WiFi. I’m a huge bird nerd, and Merlin has helped me become familiar with the avian soundtrack that plays constantly across the tundra. Also, it’s free.

That’s it for now. As always, feel free to reach out with your thoughts or questions, or just to say hi.

Today marks the first day of my four-month guiding season in Alaska. I’ve spent the last couple weeks helping set up camp, and tomorrow I finally hit the water. It’s a moment I’ve looked forward to for months. From now until October, I’ll work, fish, and hang out in some of the most vibrant, unspoiled wilderness in North America.

What I’m Up To:

In March, I embarked on a month-long adventure to Peru, where I explored mountains and cities alike with my good friend Andy. The trip started with a three-day hostel-to-hostel trek from Soraypampa to Mach Picchu, which included crossing Abra Salkantay, a 15,200’ pass on the shoulder of Salkantay Mountain. The trail then descended into jungle, where we spotted butterflies of all shapes and colors, a petite deer known as a taruca, and a staggering variety of hummingbirds, including the sword-billed hummingbird, which has a bill longer than its body and looks like what a child might come up with if asked to draw a hummingbird from memory.

Machu Picchu was stunning – as advertised – but the throngs of selfie-stick wielding tourists clogging the pathways through the ruins made the site feel like Disneyland without the roller coasters, and I found myself longing for the birdsong and open trail I’d grown accustomed to over the previous few days.

The main objective of the trip was a roughly 70 mile circuit through and around the Cordillera Huayhash, a jagged clump of soaring, glaciated peaks and idyllic high-elevation valleys. Andy and I elected to tackle the trek without a guide, which meant carrying all our food and gear for a nine-day itinerary and using a guidebook to avoid following the wrong mule track into some seldom visited valley or sketchy slope. Early April is shoulder season in the Huayhash, which makes for unpredictable and at times severe weather but minimal crowds. The entire trek is above 14,00’ of elevation save for a small section that dips down to about 12,00’ before heading straight up again. The highest passes are over 16,000’.

The trek proved rainy, but the sizzling Andean sun broke through for a few hours most days, providing an opportunity to dry out damp tents and burning off the clouds that impede clean views of the peaks. The peaks of the Huayhash are larger and more dramatic than anything I have seen in North America, and the view from Paso Santa Rosa left me breathless, and not just because it sits at 16,400’. After completing the trek, Andy and I had enough time to squeeze in a wild 40-mile bike ride that included views of Peru’s highest peak, Huascaran, hundreds bike-hating stray dogs, and a screaming 10-mile gravel descent. In Lima, we rented surfboards and caught a few waves within view of the city’s skyscrapers. Peru is an outdoor adventure paradise by any measure.

Upon returning to the US, I set out on a quick bikepacking trip with my longtime adventure buddy Tyler Brown. Tyler is a remarkably experienced bikepacker, and he gave me a comprehensive and challenging introduction to the discipline. Unfortunately, I had to bail on our fifth day and hitchhike home from Gualala after consecutive days of more than 80 miles of riding and 10,000 feet of climbing tightened my quad tendon and rendered my right knee useless. Nonetheless, I enjoyed both the scenery and the challenge of the trip, and I look forward to getting back in the saddle come fall.

Important Happenings:

Most Endangered Rivers:

American Rivers, a phenomenal organization named after the resource it seeks to protect, recently released its annual list of America’s most endangered rivers. Though the list provides only a snapshot of the thousands of rivers and streams that need help, it highlights some of the most pressing conservation battles in the country. For my fellow Californians, two of our state’s rivers make the list, as Northern California’s Trinity River faces excessive diversions and low flows, while Southern California’s Tijuana River suffers from devastating pollution. Check the full list out here.

California Salmon Season Canceled:

For the second consecutive year, California decided to cancel its commercial and sport fishing seasons for salmon. This is the right decision, as California’s salmon population draws closer to extinction every year. Keep in mind that the closure will allow all salmon that make it into the rivers and avoid predation to reach their spawning grounds, as they did last year. This will spur news of record salmon returns, as it did last year. Though increased returns are a welcome benefit of the fishing closure, they are similar to a rainy year in a historic drought: A step in the right direction, but far from a solution to the larger problem.

Klamath Dams Update:

I’ll continue to provide updates on the Klamath River in this newsletter as long as there are newsworthy developments. Iron Gate Dam, the largest dam on the river and principal impediment to fish passage, is on its way down. Once the third most productive salmon river on the West Coast, the Klamath begins its comeback story. The scientists I’ve talked to say that three generations, or roughly nine years, is a reasonable amount of time for big changes in salmon returns to occur. Most of them, though, said that they expect to see results much sooner. Keep tabs on this river. The restoration effort may be the most important and fascinating salmon conservation project of all time.

A Few Recommendations:

Running 5 Miles:

My career as a recreational runner began by sprinting three miles a couple times a week, feeling awful at the end of each run, and getting progressively slower. When I decided to start training for long distance events, I scrapped my old strategy and instead ran slow. Super slow. The longer I stuck to the new routine, the further my legs carried me, and my mile times began to drop, too. The magical distance where running became fun was right around five miles. If you are a lifelong running-hater, try running really slow and working your way up to five miles.

Mountain Gazette:

Mountain Gazette is, succinctly, a bigass magazine packed to the gills with stunning photography and in-depth storytelling. I received my first issue a couple of weeks ago and spent the next few mornings with my head in the magazine – and I literally mean in it. It’s that big. The gigantic scale of the publication can seem like a gimmick at first, but when you open the matte pages to a 22”x17” spread of a wetsuit clad madman surfing a wave in Lake Tahoe mid-snowstorm, it starts to make sense. Mountain Gazette make two issues a year, and each one is a unique piece of art. I have no affiliation with the magazine, I just think it’s great. Subscribe here.

Snickers Bars:

Tastier than trail mix, cheaper than protein bars, and packed with calories. Snickers bars have become my constant companion on outdoor adventures. Last year in Alaska, I was chastised for allegedly scarfing down the entire camp’s supply at a rate north of two bars per day. I have no regrets. Buy them literally anywhere that sells things, and thank me later.

That’s it for now. Enjoy the longest days of the year, I know I will.

Your friend,

Tommy

I’m currently in Peru for a month of trekking, sightseeing, and Spanish practice. I’m enjoying immersing myself in an unfamiliar culture and walking around in big mountains with a heavy pack. I won’t go into any more detail though – let’s save that for my next newsletter.

As always, I hope you all are happy and healthy and enjoying some time outside.

What I’m Up To:

Since January, I’ve been rambling along the highways of the Western US, spending lots of time in Oakland, CA and Tillamook County, OR. I’ve enjoyed beautiful, sunny weather in California and endured the nastiest winter storms Oregon has to offer. Throughout my travels, my main objective has been pursuing winter steelhead.

Winter steelhead are among the most fascinating native creatures in the Pacific Northwest. Millions of years ago, certain populations of rainbow trout developed an ability to leave their nutrient-poor birth streams and spend most of their life at sea before returning home to spawn. In other words, steelhead are trout that roughly follow the life cycle of salmon.

Steelhead are muscular, acrobatic fish that grow far larger than resident trout thanks to their hearty seafood diets. For nearly their entire life, they are out of reach of fly anglers, but each winter when they return to the river to spawn, dedicated (insane?) anglers are afforded a magical opportunity to intercept the fish on their way upstream.

Steelhead are not hard to fool – they’ll grab most flies presented to them. They are, however, incredibly hard to find. I spent roughly a dozen days chasing winter steelhead this season, and I doubt that I swung a fly in front of a single fish. Like salmon, steelhead numbers have declined sharply over the last century due to dam construction, habitat destruction, overfishing, pollution, and climate change. Even in the days when steelhead numbers were robust, anglers commonly went days at a time without hooking a fish. A pursuit that was once challenging now borders on absurd.

The lack of fish is one thing, the weather is another. Winter steelhead fishing usually involves rain, sleet, hail, or snow. Some days that I fished this winter, I got all of the above. The river itself is rarely warmer than 40 degrees, and the air is about the same. River levels fluctuate with all the precipitation, forcing anglers to chase prime conditions from one river to another. Winter steelhead fishing is mostly reliant on two things: Gasoline and suffering.

If absolutely none of this sounds appealing to you, I don’t blame you. Most of it isn’t much fun. But winter steelheading also involves sharing misty old-growth forest with ousels, ducks, elk, and eagles. Swinging flies is simultaneously meditative and engrossing. Some days the whole pursuit feels like an exercise in futility – most days, actually – but the day you get the grab, it all makes sense. Last year, I got the grab. One fish to hand. This year, I didn’t. I may catch ten next season or I may never catch one again, but I’ll show up every year for the chance to play the game.

Notable Happenings:

I wrote about the Klamath River dam removals in my last newsletter, and a lot has happened since then. All the reservoirs have been drawn down, and demolition is underway. Draining the reservoirs exposed a lot of nasty mud that’s been trapped behind the dams for decades and stranded thousands of non-native fish. This was all expected by the removal team, but that hasn’t prevented concern, confusion, and outrage due to the mess.

The truth about dam removal is that it’s a very young science. The Klamath project is the biggest and most ambitious dam removal project of all time. All indications are that the river and its inhabitants will be much healthier once the dams are gone, but we don’t know for sure. There will be plenty of positive and negative headlines about the project over the next few years, and if you follow the project, keep in mind that the river needs time to heal itself. The dams wrought decades of damage, and it will take years to undo. Jumping to conclusions one way or another is irresponsible, and we will all need to be patient as the river returns to its normal course.

A couple of recommendations:

Guia de Pesca

Yes, this is a shameless plug for my new article in Chasing Silver Magazine. Leandro Herrainz’s photos are incredible and the design team at CSM did a beautiful job with the layout. I’m proud to share this project with them and with my good friend Marcela, who is the subject of the story. I am more than happy to share a PDF of the article with anyone who is interested. Drop me a line and I’ll send the article your way.

Biking in the Rain

I’ve generally been blessed with great weather for riding this winter, but I tried to squeeze a ride in between squalls on a rainy day in Oakland and got caught in an absolute downpour. I was soaked immediately and the road itself looked like it was boiling as thousands of fat drops exploded on the pavement every second. Despite the cold, I found myself smiling. Sometimes being humbled by Mother Nature’s unpredictable moods is downright joyful.

Until next time, friends.

Cheers,

Tommy

First of all, I want to thank all of you for reading my newsletter over the last several months. As we enter a new year, I’ve decided to lend these posts a more consistent format. If that turns out to be something you enjoy, let me know. If you hate it, tell me why! My newsletter, on a trial basis, will be called On the Road Again.

For now, these posts will revolve around three main topics: What I’m up to, some news of note regarding wilderness, rivers, open spaces, outdoor recreation, or anything related, and finally, a few recommendations that may include books, magazines, films, music, food, bike rides, or really anything I’ve experienced that I feel is worth sharing

Let’s dive in …

What I’m Up To:

I’m writing this from Bozeman, Montana, but my travels since my last newsletter have taken me to Baja California Sur, Mexico; Rio Gallegos, Argentina; Portland and Beaver, Oregon; Oakland, California; and Boise, Idaho.

In Baja, my sister and I took surfing lessons at Cerritos Beach, where schools of baitfish caught my eye and distracted my balance as I stood up on my rental surfboard, snaring my attention long enough for me to faceplant into the warm, crystalline water. After a couple of mornings getting pummeled by surf, Meta and I each caught a few modest waves.

The rest of our time in Baja was spent in La Paz, a dusty, charming city set in the southern crook of a massive, crescent-shaped bay in the Sea of Cortez. We spent a few days exploring local beaches, swimming with sea lions and glittering masses of anchovies, and searching for the best sushi the city has to offer (which, by the way, we found). Baja California is largely dry, hot, and barren, but its mountains and beaches are undeniably beautiful. I hope to return many times.

In December, I set out on the crown jewel of my offseason travel plans. Over the course of about a day and a half, I made my way from Portland to Buenos Aires and then further south to Rio Gallegos, Argentina. Fun fact: Rio Gallegos is slightly farther from Portland than Kathmandu, Nepal. I went to Rio Gallegos to write a profile of my friend Marcela, a fly fishing guide on the world-famous sea trout rivers of southern Argentina.

The Rio Gallegos flows through a rumpled, wind-battered landscape reminiscent of much of Montana. Bella Sofia Lodge, where Marcela guides, has access to two estancias with a combined 500,000 acres of grazing land and 65 kilometers of river frontage. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. 100,000 sheep share the land with guanacos, foxes, rhea, flamingoes, skunks, and dozens of other unique and curious native animal species.

Though the scenery was incredible, I was there for the fishing, and the fishing at Bella Sofia is among the best I have ever experienced. The Rio Gallegos has a prolific run of ocean-going brown trout – known as sea trout – that grow far bigger in a year at sea than they would in a lifetime in the river. When they return to the river to spawn, the moody fish sometimes fall for my hook-and-line trickery, and for the few minutes that we are connected, I can feel the fish’s energy like an electrical current through the fly rod.

Look for my story on Marcela and her unique journey to the guiding life in the upcoming issue of Chasing Silver Magazine. The magazine is expensive, but lucky for you, dear reader, you know a guy, and he’d be happy to send you a PDF of the article free of charge. If you’re interested in reading my article, drop me a line.

Notable Happenings:

Dam removal is having a moment in California. If you haven’t heard already, the largest dam removal project of all time is underway on California and Oregon’s Klamath River. Four dams are slated to be removed by the end of 2024, and the smallest of the four is already out. The removals will allow steelhead and salmon to access over 400 miles of spawning habitat previously blocked by the dams. This is huge news for fish but also for fishing communities, kayakers, rafters, trees, birds, bears, and every living thing in the Klamath River ecosystem.

With demolition already underway on the Klamath, another California North Coast river is on the list for dam removal in the near future. Last month, PG&E announced plans to decommission and remove Scott and Cape Horn dams, freeing the Eel from mountains to sea. Though removal looks more possible than ever on the Eel, it’s not a sure thing yet. Organizations like California Trout and Friends of the Eel River will be working tirelessly over the coming years and months to make sure that this emblematic river runs free again. I encourage anyone who loves rivers to follow along with their work and to help out in whatever way you feel moved to.

A Few Recommendations:

Sun House, a novel by David James Duncan

Full disclosure: I haven’t actually finished this book yet… but! It is the career-defining work of one of my favorite authors, and it contains all the elements that make his writing so unique and enjoyable. Sun House is funny, heartbreaking, offbeat, weird, and so carefully crafted it makes sense that it took Duncan decades to shape. It is over 700 pages long, which is why I haven’t finished it yet despite reading it every day this month, so there is plenty to enjoy

Rancho Gordo Beans, really really tasty heirloom beans

In college, I often cooked plain old lack beans from big box grocery stores, and they tasted… just ok. I figured that that’s all there was to know about beans until recently when I was gifted a couple of bags of heirloom Rancho Gordo beans. Both bags contained bean varieties of beans that I had never heard of, and they proved far more flavorful than the mass-produced black beans I’d been buying. The Rancho Gordo story is pretty cool, and I plan to try every bean they have this year. My old red truck, lovingly known as The Bean, would be proud.

Black Crows Ghost Resort series, featuring outstanding animation graphics by my very talented friend Annika Danenhauer

Japan’s mountains receive insane amounts of snow each winter, so it’s no surprise that skiing experienced a huge boom in popularity there during the 1990s. When the Japanese economy experienced a sharp decline in the ensuing years, hundreds of ski resorts were boarded up, never to e reopened. Black Crows visited some of these resorts and spoke with the locals who skied the area through the boom and bust and took a look at what the future may hold. The story is fascinating, the powder is deep and fluffy, and the animations are delightful.

That’s all for now! Feel free to reach out with any questions, statements, or epiphanies.

Your friend,

Tommy

I hope everyone enjoyed their favorite Turkey Day dishes with loved ones yesterday. I’m currently in Boise with my family, enjoying some downtime as my fall road trip wraps up.

For the last month or so, I’ve been traversing the western US in my truck, visiting friends, exploring rivers, and seeing some beautiful parts of the West for the first time. For the entire duration of my travels, I’ve been immersed in peak fall colors and weather. Fall is my favorite season, and it feels a bit like cheating to follow the best of it all the way from Alaska to California, spending plenty of time in Montana and Oregon along the way.

I started October with a quick camping trip in Yellowstone to chase the run of migratory trout that occurs in the Madison River every fall. The park is gorgeous in October, and the rivers are absurdly crowded. I caught a few trout, spent some cold nights in my truck, and had an absolute blast. From there, I headed west to Glacier, where I spent most of the week exploring the park and surrounding area.

I spent my last few days in Montana fishing with friends near Missoula, a town I’ve been fond of since my first visit in 2018. The larches were at peak yellow while we floated through the Blackfoot River canyon. Despite the fall colors, we had midday temperatures in the 70s and plenty of trout willing to eat dry flies. This stuff prompts people to pack up their lives and move to Montana.

From Missoula, I drove to Portland and enjoyed a week with my dad at my parents' cabin. We planned a wilderness float trip in Eastern Oregon, but a cold snap put a damper on those plans, and we decided to float the river in our backyard instead. In about a month, steelhead will enter the river, and we’ll spend a lot more time on the water searching for the elusive sea-run trout.

As a bonus adventure, I had the privilege of transporting an abandoned puppy found cowering in a driveway in Oakland to her new home in Portland. The puppy, whom I called Goose, is a lithe, gorgeous dog with obvious herding ancestry. She is an enthusiastic playmate and an eager companion. For most of our drive to Portland, she slept in the passenger seat of my truck, but she occasionally hopped on top of my cooler in the backseat for a better view and skittered back and forth as I wound through mountain passes. Her new family promptly renamed her “Arrow” upon delivery and fed her homemade chicken soup to welcome her home.

Last week, I made my first trip to the Clearwater River in Idaho to fish for the longest-traveled steelhead in the world. The steelhead of the Clearwater and Salmon rivers swim over 500 river miles inland after entering the Columbia River at Astoria. The fish reach enormous sizes in the ocean and turn dark olive with crimson cheeks as they travel upriver. If you want to learn more about them, message me, and I’ll send you my latest article in Chasing Silver Magazine, which covers some of the conservation issues plaguing the Clearwater and Salmon.

Throughout my travels, I’ve been immersed in the culture of the modern western US. The population centers are bustling and dense, the mountain towns are vibrant and sprawling, and the rural villages seem part of an altogether separate nation. Mostly, though, the West is empty.

Ranches and forests cover acreages that would take days or weeks to traverse on foot. Through the windows of my truck, I see hundreds of cows for every person. Towns feel like islands, and solitude lies around every curve in the road. It is daunting, lonely, cold, and windy. It is gorgeous beyond compare.

For those of you who live here, what does the West look like through your eyes? For those of you who live elsewhere, what is your perception of the West? I look forward to hearing from anyone who wants to share.

Look for my next newsletter around the new year. Until then, enjoy the holidays and your favorite cold-weather pursuits.

Your friend,

Tommy

Last week, I returned to Montana from Alaska. The journey began with a 100-mile floatplane flight from Lava Creek Lodge to King Salmon, AK. King Salmon is little more than a post office, airport, general store, bar, and a collection of airplanes moored to floating docks in the Naknek River. After checking our bags at the one-room airport, the LCL staff hoofed it down the street to Eddy’s where we drank beer, watched football, and people-watched. We looked the part of an Alaskan bush crew, and before long, a group of Aussie tourists were goading our head guide into joining their group photo

Roughly twenty hours and three flights later, I arrived to find golden leaves and sunshine in Bozeman. Finally, my journey felt complete, and I began to reflect on my summer in the Alaskan wilds.

September in Alaska yields much of the best and some of the worst weather of the season. The best days begin with crisp fall air and a fuchsia sunrise, continue with cloudless skies, and end with placid evenings full of waterfowl calls and – later – unbelievable stargazing. The worst days consist of darkness, wind, rain, and near-freezing temperatures. Through it all, we catch coho salmon by the dozen and hunt ducks and geese in our precious free time.

Working at a remote fishing camp in Alaska is hard. The days are long, time off is rare and fleeting, the weather is often dismal, and your family and friends are thousands of miles away. It is also wonderful, exciting, and beautiful. Alaska challenged me in ways I’ve never been challenged and required toughness and capability that I didn’t know I had. I wouldn’t trade my experience this summer for anything, but I’m taking plenty of time to unwind after such a prolonged, intense experience.

What is something challenging that you’ve done that facilitated personal growth? Would you do it again? How did you wind down from that experience? I’m interested to hear from anyone who wants to share!

For those of you who are interested in my writing pursuits, I have a new article in Chasing Silver Magazine about steelhead fishing in the Upper Columbia watershed and the effort to remove four dams that impede steelhead migration in the Snake River. The magazine can be purchased at chasingsilvermagazine.com, but if you’d like to read the article without having to buy the magazine, send me a note and I’ll help you out.

That’s all for now!

Your friend,

Tommy

Last week, I woke up in my tent as I have every morning for the last three months and stepped outside to greet the day. Immediately, I felt a change. The air carried a bite that I hadn’t felt all season. The breeze cut through my thin cotton hoodie, and I shivered in the morning sun. Fall had officially arrived on the Alaska peninsula.

The seasons change astonishingly fast on the tundra. This time last month, we had just stopped fishing for King salmon and were refocusing our efforts on trout in the upper reaches of the river. A month later, we’re halfway through the Coho salmon run, and the kings - having completed the last stage of their life cycle by spawning - are nearly all dead.

When you spend all day outside for months on end in the same landscape, you notice subtle changes. Driving the boat upriver, I’ll spot a bear long before the clients sitting in front of me do because I know that there is no rock or bush on the tip of the gravel island 500 yards away. In the same way that a misplaced object in your living room will immediately catch your eye, a change in the landscape where you work and fish stands out like a neon billboard.

All landscapes are immersive. They provide data to all five senses. You don’t just see summer turn to fall; you feel it, smell it, taste it, hear it. Let’s back up to that morning when autumn arrived in camp. When I opened my door, it was barely light enough to see. The fireweed in front of me had lost nearly half of its flowers. The morning air on my skin felt far sharper than it did the morning before. The air smelled and tasted fresher – cleaner. Flocks of cackling geese made raucous passes over camp. Every one of my five senses told me that something was different.

Perhaps the most intriguing change is the shift in the birdsong soundscape as the short summer rolls by. The prehistoric croaking of sandhill cranes, the sweet, cadenced melodies of white-crowned sparrows, the sharp staccato divebomb and nasal challenges of ptarmigan, and the off-kilter, electronic tweeting of Lapland longspurs dominated June’s airwaves. In July the ptarmigan chicks became larger and bolder, and their rubbery chits and purrs gave away the location of the brood. Now, flocks of geese cruise over camp daily, filling the sky with honks and cries.

What birdsongs do you hear most in your backyard? Do you have a favorite? Are there any that annoy you? Do they change with the season? Let me know!

Your friend,

Tommy

King salmon season is officially over and we’re expecting the silvers to show up in the next two weeks. Things change fast out here!

While our river hosts all five species of Pacific salmon, kings (Chinook) and silvers (Coho) are the two species that we specifically target. During the small break between the two runs, we fish for rainbow trout and dolly varden char in the upper reaches of the river.

Our river system is remarkably healthy. There are no roads, logging, mining, point-source pollution, dams, or commercial fishing anywhere in the watershed. All the salmon are wild and all five species return in strong numbers every season. In 2023, that is a rarity of the highest order.

Salmon are resilient fish, but they rely on healthy rivers and healthy oceans – two things that are increasingly difficult to find. This year, California decided to cancel their commercial king salmon fishing season for the third consecutive year. Oregon canceled its season as well, and even the Southeast Alaska fishery could close pending court proceedings. America’s salmon are in deep, deep trouble.

I could go on for hours about the threats that salmon face, but instead, I’ll point you all to a pair of documentaries made by Patagonia. Damnation covers the history of dams in the US and the environmental consequences of clogging up almost every river and stream on an entire continent. The scale at which the US has industrialized its rivers is mind-boggling, and I doubt that anyone who has seen Damnation will ever look at a dam again without feeling a twinge of dread.

Artifishal goes hand-in-hand with Damnation, explaining how humans have tried – at huge cost and with little success – to replace naturally reproducing fish with hatchery-raised brood stocks. The film does a wonderful job explaining the difference between a wild fish and a hatchery fish, and how hatcheries contribute to the decline of wild salmon worldwide.

If you’re interested in wild salmon, I’d love to field any and all questions you may have about them. Don’t hesitate to drop me a line! If you’re not interested in wild salmon, tell me why!

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, and let’s all take a minute to appreciate the wild beauty around us, whether it’s a wild river full of salmon or a giant tree forcing cracks in the sidewalk with its roots. Nothing wild should ever be taken for granted.

Your friend,

Tommy

Time flies when you’re working your butt off in the Alaskan tundra. Since my last Substack update, I’ve been living and working at Lava Creek Lodge, an off-the-grid fly fishing lodge on the Alaska Peninsula.

For my first couple of weeks, I roamed around camp and helped out with odd jobs. My projects included evening out the dirt runway next to the lodge and constructing a septic box for the staff bathroom. Needless to say, I spent many hours moving sand and tundra with a shovel.

My home is a 12 by 12-foot platform with a tent. I have a wooden floor and some pieces of carpet to avoid getting splinters in my feet. Life is quite simple here.

We are in the midst of king salmon season, and I’ve been guiding clients on our home river for the past two weeks. We cast flies on two-handed fly rods (known to fishermen as spey rods) and catch kings between 10 and 35 pounds. We also have plenty of chum and sockeye salmon in the river and we occasionally run into a dolly varden or rainbow trout.

Bears, wolves, foxes, caribou, moose, eagles, ptarmigan and cranes abound. The bird life is unbelievably rich. Dozens of species of sandpipers and plovers flutter over the water and zoom past while I drive my boat up and down the river. Migrating ducks stop in the untouched wetlands to rest. Massive tundra geese float placidly in the pothole lakes across the landscape. This is one of the rare places on Earth where all life has more than enough room.

I’ve continued to pursue freelance writing assignments, and I’m working on a couple of projects in my extremely limited free time up here. This month, my profile of conservation icon Doug Peacock was published in the summer issue of Outside Bozeman. I’d worked on the article for over a year before it was published and I’m quite proud of the result. Check it out if you’re interested and pass it along if you know someone who loves all things wild.

I hope everybody’s summer is off to a pleasant start and that you’re all experiencing some warm weather, which does not exist in my area of the world. Spending every day outside here is a blessing, and I encourage everyone to explore a place this summer you’ve never been before, you might stumble upon something amazing.

Cheers from Alaska,

Tommy

I started this newsletter to keep my people updated as I exit college and launch my career as a professional fly-fishing article-writing truck-driving coffee-guzzling vagabond. If you are on this email list, it means that: (A) I think you’re interested in what I’m up to, and (B) I think you’re awesome. If one or both of those aren’t true, just unsubscribe – I’ll only cry a little bit.

Two weeks ago, I graduated from Montana State University with a B.S. in Economics and a minor in Water Resources. In my time at MSU, I learned, failed, succeeded, and spent a ton of time outside. It was a formative experience and one I will look back upon fondly despite the first two years being utterly mangled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In my final class, I worked with a team of students to publish a magazine called Bitterroot, featuring my photography on the cover and my writing in a couple of articles. I also served as the editor for the Montana Research section of the magazine. Working on the magazine was a phenomenal learning experience, and I’m quite proud of the result.

Before I get into my plans for the coming months, I want to give y’all a quick recap of an epic trip I did with some of my closest friends over spring break. On a chilly morning in early March, I boarded a plane to Atlanta with my friends Andy and Hayden. Roughly twenty-four hours and three flights later, we arrived in Santiago and met up with two more buddies: Wyatt and Max.

The five of us spent a few days exploring Chile’s largest city and took a day trip to Valparaiso, a smaller yet more lively city on the coast. From there, we flew south to Puerto Natales, and the real adventure began.

Over the next two weeks, we completed a short backpacking trip in Argentina’s Parque Nacional los Glaciares – home to Mount Fitz Roy and the Perito Moreno glacier, among other natural wonders – and a much longer trek in Chile’s Parque Nacional Torres Del Paine. We saw glaciers, Andean condors, unfathomably large granite spires, and the fiery leaves of southern autumn.

The trip was awe-inspiring and exhausting. As soon as we returned, we started plotting even more ambitious travel for the coming year.

For now, I’m headed to Lava Creek Lodge in southwestern Alaska to guide fly fishing. I will be living on a stretch of tundra near the Bering Sea for four months with six coworkers and eight guests. It will be cold, wet, windy, buggy, and overrun with brown bears. To many, that probably sounds like torture. To me, it sounds like bliss.

If you’ve made it this far, you either find my life very interesting or you have a lot of time on your hands. Either way, thanks for sticking with it. I plan to send one of these out each month, so keep your eyes peeled for an update sometime in late June. Whether you’re in Oakland, Bozeman, St. John’s, L.A., or lost in the woods, I hope you have a wonderful summer, and I look forward to the next time our paths cross.

Cheers,

Tommy

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