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Rowing in the Right Direction

In 2019, Susan Masten led the Yurok Tribe to grant personhood to the Klamath River, the first river so honored in North America. We met Susan earlier at the tribal nation luncheon at the CRWUA conference. The Klamath River starts in Oregon at Klamath Lake, and flows 263 miles to Requa on the Pacific Ocean, about 30 miles below the Oregon border. Her ancestors participated in an 1851 treaty that secured land and water resources in the Klamath River, but over the years the Yurok Nation lost 99.72% of its treaty lands. Today the Yurok Nation occupies 1 mile on each side of the Klamath River for 45 miles from the Pacific Ocean to just above its confluence with the Trinity River.

In 2023-24, four dams were removed from the Klamath River, the largest dam removal project ever on earth, restoring 263 miles of the natural Klamath River up to Klamath Falls. Including its major tributaries, 450 miles have been restored, all prime salmon habitat in what was and is again one of the largest salmon runs on earth. Masten attributes this recovery to granting personhood to the river, saying that earlier U.S. laws like the Clean Water Act only address symptoms. Granting the river personhood codifies Yurok values that view the river as a living relative to whom humans owe responsibilities.

The year 1851 is very early in the Anglo history of California as the state had barely a thousand Anglos five years earlier when it became a US territory in 1846. Life for the natives changed fast when gold was discovered as an estimated 80,000 gold seekers entered California in 1849 and 220,000 by 1852. The Yurok Nation’s struggles to live along and protect the Klamath River are recounted in The Water Remembers, My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life, written by Masten’s niece Amy Bowers Cordalis in 2025.

Cordalis writes that the Klamath River is a main character in her book as it is an ancient relative. The Yurok word for salmon is nepuy, which translates to “that which is eaten.” The Creator told the Yurok people that they would never want for anything if they lived in balance with this world and as part of nature and never took more than they needed to survive. But if the salmon perished, the Yurok people would perish.[i]

It has taken nearly 200 years for the Yurok Nation to restore the Klamath River and protect their right to live along it.

1851               Camp Klamath Treaty was signed. The Yurok signers had no understanding of what a signature was, having no written language, nor of the finality that signatures carry in American law.  It is one of 18 unratified treaties (often called the "Secret Treaties") negotiated in California between 1851 and 1852 that the U.S. Senate failed to ratify due to pressure from gold miners and settlers.[ii]

1892               The State of California applied the General Allotment Act of 1887 to the Yurok Tribe. This federal act opened reservation land to non-tribal members and allowed tribal members to sell land to outsiders, leading to the large-scale sell-off of tribal nation land across the United States.

1918               The Bureau of Reclamation builds the first of four dams on the Klamath River.

1933               California said the Yuroks could not fish for salmon on the Klamath River because the General Allotment Act of 1887 voided the 1851 Treaty. California said it controlled the river, and California said, no fishing.

1962               The Bureau of Reclamation completes the last of four dams aptly titled the Iron Gate Dam.

1969               Ray Mattz, Susan Masten’s uncle, is arrested for the 19th time at age 36 for fishing for salmon in the Klamath River. He refuses the judge’s offer the settle for $1, instead asserting his right to fish. California courts rule against him, but the US Supreme Court agrees to hear his case.

1973               The Supreme Court, with Harry Blackmun writing the decision, unanimously ruled that the General Allotment Act of June 17, 1892, which opened the Klamath River Reservation to settlement, did not terminate the reservation or the Camp Klamath Treaty, rejecting California’s claim. It said Ray Mattz could fish.[iii]

1974               The US Supreme Court holds in U.S. v. Washington that treaties preserve the tribal nation’s pre-existing right to fish at all "usual and accustomed grounds and stations," whether on or off the reservation.[iv] These treaty rights entitle tribes to a "fair share" of the fish, defined as up to 50% of the harvestable run or a lesser amount if sufficient to satisfy the tribes' ceremonial and subsistence needs or provide a "moderate living".

1978               The US Department of the Interior under Secretary Cecil Andrus tells the Yurok Nation that its members can no longer fish for salmon, leading to the Salmon Wars.

1980s:           Susan Masten reaches agreement with stakeholders to reserve 50% of the salmon catch in the Klamath River to the Yurok Nation.

1997               Susan Masten becomes chairwoman of the Yurok Nation.

2002               Bureau of Reclamation releases clean water to irrigators in Oregon’s Klamath Basin, and 600 cubic feet per second of water poisoned by blue-green algae from Iron Gate Dam down the Klamath River, causing over 38,000 salmon to die. The fish kill inspires Amy Bowers Cordalis to become a lawyer, and becomes the catalyst to remove the dams on the Klamath River.

2006               PacifiCorp, a company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway corporation, applies for a 50-year renewal of its license to operate the four Klamath River dams from FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

2010               FERC requires fish ladders to stop the crashing salmon population. PacifiCorp agrees to remove the four dams, a cheaper alternative than constructing fish ladders.

2014               The Yurok Nation begins lobbying Congress for funds to remove the dams.

2016               The Klamath River salmon population declines to 3-5% of its historic run. The Yurok Nation is allotted only 600 salmon to harvest. Amy Bowers Cordalis becomes General Counsel of the Yurok Nation.

2019               The Yurok Nation grants personhood to the Klamath River.

2023-24        Four dams are removed.

2025               A salmon run estimated at 10,000 fish pass the Iron Gate dam site, returning to their ancestral homeland up the Klamath River system.  Going the other way, Susan Masten’s granddaughter Keeya Wiki and indigenous friends from six tribal nations living near the river reach Requa on the Pacific Ocean in the first source-to-sea kayak descent of the Klamath River.

I hope the ceremonial kayak descent becomes an annual event.

“Yurok people view nature differently than most Americans,” Amy Bowers Cordalis writes. “Rather than working to tame nature or make money from it, our goal is to live in balance and work in partnership with it. We strive to restore nature by understanding it, anticipating its needs, speaking for it, and taking action to protect it. We steward the land, water, and species, and they seem to understand our kinship.”[v]

The hot weather continues

The Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) reflects the temperature of the ocean surface in the North Pacific. It sounds complicated but it isn’t, it basically measures the temperature of the ocean surface in the Pacific Ocean north of 20oN, the latitude of the Hawaiian Islands. When it is warmer, the PDO is in a negative phase and the Colorado River Basin is drier. The PDO has been locked in a consistent downward negative trend for more than three decades since the 1990s, an unusually long duration for a fluctuating cycle. This sustained negative phase is a primary driver of the Southwest's driest 20-year period in 1,200 years, pushing storm tracks further north and reducing winter precipitation.

A 2025 study in Nature found that since the 1950s, over half of the rise in Pacific ocean surface temperature has been driven by human emissions (greenhouse gases and aerosols) rather than natural internal processes.[vi] As of January 2026, the PDO has reached historic lows, with 2025 recording the most negative monthly value since at least 1950. If greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates, researchers warn that the negative phase could persist for several more decades, effectively "locking in" drought-inducing conditions for the American West.

As this book was nearing completion on January 13, 2026, Colorado's statewide snowpack hit its lowest level ever recorded for this point in the season, with statewide snowpack sitting between 54% and 62% of the median for this time of year. I have my own personal guide to the weather, the months when I can ride my bike from home to work in Basalt. I used to ride between April and November. Two years ago I started riding my bike in March. Last year, I rode in February. This year, I’m riding from my home above 7,000’ to 6,611’ in Basalt during December and January. There’s no snow at this elevation. Is this just an anomaly? Maybe not if the PDO oscillation has irreversibly shifted the climate to a new regime where I live.

The scientists in Dancing with Deadpool address groundwater mining, another topic that did not make the CRWUA conference agenda. Groundwater provides approximately 40% of total water supply for Arizona, California, and Nevada in the lower Colorado River Basin, a number that will almost certainly go up, especially if Arizona gets shorted in the 2026 Negotiations and permanently loses a fourth of its Colorado River allocation. In areas like Pinal County between Phoenix and Tucson, farmers have already become almost entirely reliant on groundwater after losing their Central Arizona Project (CAP) allocations.

A typical acre of alfalfa in Pinal County requires between 4 and 6 acre-feet of water per season and yields around 6 tons. Incredibly, it takes the equivalent of 150 to 225 tank trucks the size we see filling up gas stations to grow an acre of alfalfa in Pinal County each year. Economics should take care of this huge water use, since the electricity cost alone to pump groundwater to grow alfalfa is about $70-90 per acre foot, driving the cost to produce alfalfa to $165 to $300 per ton. The 2026 market price for alfalfa is only $170 per ton. At that price, it is cost prohibitive—it’s cheaper to buy alfalfa than to grow it. Arizona could address its forthcoming water shortage by simply stopping alfalfa production. That’s not easy because state legislatures throughout the West are dominated by low population rural counties that grow a lot of hay.

Groundwater consumption is projected to rise significantly, and there’s no robust protection of it or management strategies.[vii] In 2014 California passed “landmark” groundwater legislation known as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, but it doesn’t require critically over-drafted basins to reach groundwater sustainability until 2040.[viii] That’s a typical time frame in my experience.

Groundwater pumping is governed by the rule of capture, which says whoever pumps it gets to use it for whatever use they want. We’ve already mined so much groundwater that it has affected the earth’s rotation according to NASA. Researchers can estimate how much water was removed by measuring the change in gravity in regions that are losing water from aquifers and reservoirs like  Lakes Mead and Powell.[ix]

NASA places two satellites 220 km apart in a geo-stationary orbit which means they stay in the same place relative to the earth below. But as they travel around the earth, they lean into the earth when there is more gravitational attraction, and lean away when there is less gravity. These differences are minor, but they are perceptible. They indicate less gravity, and there’s less gravity because there’s less groundwater and less water in Lakes Mead and Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the United States.

From 2002 to 2025, Powell and Mead reservoirs combined dropped from 72% to 27% full, but that accounted for only 35% of total water extraction measured by NASA satellites. Groundwater extraction was nearly double that, 65%. Between 1993 and 2010, humans pumped more than 2 trillion tons of groundwater globally, and the two global hotspots are in India and the western United States, specifically the Colorado River Basin and the Central Valley in California.[x] This mass redistribution caused the Earth's rotational pole to drift approximately 31.5 inches (80 cm) toward the east.

Climate change is making things worse, but Brad Udall, a Senior Water & Climate Research Scientist/Scholar at Colorado State University, says in Dancing with Deadpool that this is a reason to be optimistic—we can reverse this by cutting fossil fuel use.

Defending NCAR

On December 18, 2025, the day the CRWUA conference ended, Trump vowed to cut funding and break up NCAR, one of the world’s leading earth science research institutions,[1] claiming it does frivolous research. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is a landmark in Boulder, nestled high on a hill against the picturesque Flatiron formation. The climate change graph in the middle of the book was prepared by Jeff Lukas who works there.

I’ve been running into Jeff Lukas at Colorado water meetings for nearly 20 years. He is the lead author on a 2020 climate change report, Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology State of the Science.[xi]  The 520-page report was sponsored by the Bureau of Reclamation, the four Upper Basin states, the Central Arizona Project, Denver Water, the Colorado River District, The Arizona Department of Water Resources, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, basically all the participants who will decide the outcome of the 2026 Negotiations (that is, unless the US Supreme Court is called in).

Russel Vought, President Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, called NCAR “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said the federal government would be “breaking up” the institution. The Colorado River Research Group predicted Trump’s move just weeks before when they released Dancing with Deadpool, writing, “As members of the research community, the Colorado River Research Group (CRRG) unfortunately has a front-row seat to this culling of the people and programs essential to long-term data collection and analysis. It defies logic, and is dangerous.”[xii]

One of the stories that will define our age is just how accurate climate predictions have been. I asked Google Gemini on January 11, 2016, to evaluate climate predictions the past 50 years. It could not have been more definitive: “The evidence shows that even with the limited computing power of the 20th century, our fundamental understanding of atmospheric physics was remarkably precise. A landmark 2019 study led by Zeke Hausfather systematically evaluated 17 global temperature projections published between 1970 and 2007. The Result: 14 out of the 17 models produced projections indistinguishable from reality. These studies prove that the "greenhouse effect" isn't a new or unproven theory; it is a physical reality that we have successfully modeled for half a century.”

In The Rocking-Horse Winner, a short story I read in 7th grade, D.H Lawrence writes of Paul, a young boy who learns that by riding his rocking horse at just the right amount of frenzy, he can get lucky and divine the winner of the next horse race. Born to a family plagued by the constant whisper, “There must be more money,” Paul accumulates enough winnings from knowing the winner in advance to solve the family’s money troubles. But of course that’s not the case, it never is, and trouble awaits the small family to the end.

We live in an era where the scientists are divining the next winner for us, and they have been for fifty years. We have our rocking horse winner but refuse to ride it. Scientists have long predicted the warming planet and the lower river flows it will bring. They’re also telling us we’re nowhere near the end of this race.

A timeline to restore the Colorado River

2026               The Basin States, unable to reach agreement, sign the Basic Coordination Alternative outlined in the 2026 Draft Environmental Impact Statement released by the Bureau of Reclamation in January 2026.[xiii] It basically continues the 2007 Interim Agreement as no new storage or delivery mechanisms are introduced. Recommendations of the Tribes, environmental groups, the National Park Service and Fish & Wildlife Service go unheeded. Lake Powell and Mead storage levels remain below 30%, and articles abound about the beleaguered Colorado River.

2027               The Colorado Basin Roundtable approves a grant to create a computer model to estimate how much water diverted to flood hay fields can be left in rivers if they are sprinklered, and if ditches are lined to deliver water without waste. On nearly every stream the model predicts that 50% or more of the diverted water can remain in the stream with efficient irrigation practices.

2028               Tribal nations bring suit in the U.S. Supreme Court as a class action joining all tribes that have reserved rights to the Colorado River. The lawsuit includes indigenous nations whose water rights have not been adjudicated or ratified by Congress. The Supreme Court appoints a special master to quantify all tribal nation water rights in the Colorado River Basin.

2029               The Colorado River Indian Tribes, three years after declaring personhood for the Colorado River, dedicate 100,000 acre feet to create a constant flow of 140 cubic feet per second to restore the Lower Colorado River Delta, leasing the water to environmental groups. The United States negotiates new Minute 335 with Mexico to shepherd the water to the Gulf of California.

2030               Colorado River natural flows keep declining, averaging 10 million acre feet during the 2020s. Scientists with the Colorado River Research Group project natural flows will average 8.5 maf  by 2040. The Colorado Basin Roundtable’s computer model to estimate irrigation savings sits on the shelf, barely used. Irrigators fear, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board tacitly agrees, that diverting less water from Colorado headwater streams equates to giving up water rights.

2032               As river flows keep declining and streams keep warming, fishing restrictions in Colorado are common and widespread. Colorado voters amend Article 16 of the State Constitution, unchanged since 1876, declaring personhood for all rivers in the state. Proponents remind voters that rivers are and have been the property of the public since 1876. The amendment also guarantees the right to float on Colorado rivers, after failing to pass the legislature the prior six sessions. The law requires the state engineer to report to the Governor by 2034 how much water could remain in every significant stream with efficient irrigation practices. The Colorado Water Conservation Board is charged with developing 5-year plans with the primary goal to leave more water in the river.

2035               Arizona has a record 135 days over 100oF and 50 days exceeding 110 oF. Arizona passes the 2035 Arizona Groundwater Reform Act declaring a halt to all groundwater mining in the state for agricultural use by 2050. The Act provides state funding with a federal match to retire irrigated agriculture for a price equal to each farm’s cumulative net revenue over 20 years. Rancher participation is mandatory.

2036               The Salton Sea has shrunk by 122 square miles, nearly one-third of its year 2000 size of 375 square miles. Efforts to plant cover crops with drip irrigation along the shrinking coastline succeed, suppressing the toxic dust that plagued nearby towns.

2037               Upon completion of the first 5-year plan, efficient irrigation regimes have begun on one-third of rivers on Colorado’s West slope, paid for by conservation easements funded through local property taxes. The “buy and dry” transfer of water to urban uses is arrested, and 1 million acre feet of water formerly diverted remains in the river, confirming the computer model’s predictions.

2038               The U.S. Supreme Court quantifies all tribal nation water rights to the Colorado River in a global settlement, holding that all tribal nation water rights have priority superior to the 1922 Colorado River Compact. Tribal sovereignty means the indigenous nations determine how their water will be used. The Supreme Court has consistently held that the government's dealings with tribal property must be judged by the "most exacting fiduciary standards."[xiv]

The Supreme Court surcharges the United States to develop infrastructure to deliver water to the reservations under its historic fiduciary obligation, and directs Congress to immediately allocate funds to complete required infrastructure by 2050. Tribal nations can transfer their water to any user on the river for the price they negotiate, or dedicate it as an instream flow, and BuRec must shepherd it down the river as directed by the tribal nations. If the United States is the purchaser, tribal nations must receive at least the highest amount paid by the U.S. government to purchase water from any other owner of Colorado River water.

2040               Congress passes the Salton Sea Restoration Act, requiring all irrigators in the Imperial and Coachella Valley Irrigation Districts to use efficient irrigation practices with a goal of eliminating all runoff to the Salton Sea. The Act directs non-governmental organizations to restore the drying lakebed with cover crops, and allocates funding for the required irrigation infrastructure. The Irrigation Districts are directed to reserve sufficient water to permanently establish cover crops. The United States and Mexico revise Minute 335 to shepherd the irrigation savings down the Colorado River to the Gulf of California.

2046               In water year 2046, 800,000 acre feet flow down the Lower Colorado River Delta to the Gulf of California, a constant flow of more than 1,100 cubic feet per second. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists have managed to suppress non-native fish in the Delta, and Colorado pikeminnow, razorback suckers, and bonytail establish colonies. The Delta becomes the most significant flyway destination for migrating birds in the Western Hemisphere. The Cocopah Nation returns to the Delta.

There are still river people.

[1] Friedman, Lisa, Plumer, Brad, “Trump doves to Dismantle nation’s leading climate research center,” Las Vegas Sun, pg. 1, December 18, 2025

[i] Cordalis, Amy Bowers, The Water Remembers, 2025, pg. 4, (New York: Little, Brown & Company).

[ii] Treaty with the Pohlik or Lower Klamath, etc., Oct 6, 1851, Tribal Treaties Database, Oklahoma State University Library, https://treaties.okstate.edu/treaties/treaty-with-the-pohlik-or-lower-klamath-etc-1851-21838#:~:text=A%20treaty%20of%20peace%20and,part%20of%20the%20United%20States.

[iii] Mattz v. Arnett, 412 U.S. 481 (1973).

[iv] United States v. Washington, 443 U.S. 658 (1979)

[v] The Water Remembers, pg. 212.

[vi] Klavans Jeremy, “Climate models reveal human influence behind stalled pacific cycle,” Univ of Colorado at Boulder, 14 Aug 2025, EurekAlert, https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1094690#:~:text=Even%20the%20most%20recent%20Intergovernmental,New%20tools%2C%20new%20understanding, reporting on Klavans, J.M., DiNezio, P.N., Clement, A.C. et al. Human emissions drive recent trends in North Pacific climate variations. Nature 644, 684–692 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09368-2

[vii] Karem Abdelmohsen, James S. Famiglietti, Yufei ZoeAo, Behshad Mohajer, and Hrishikesh A. Chandanpurkar, “Declining Freshwater Availability in the Colorado River as in Threatens Sustainability of Its Critical Groundwater Supplies.” Geophysical Research Letter, 52, e2026GL115593, May 3, 2025.

[viii] Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: Background and Development, California State Water Resources Control Board, downloaded Jan. 11 2026, https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sgma/about_sgma.html#:~:text=For%20those%20groundwater%20basins%20experiencing,Legislature%20Timeline%20for%20more%20details.

[ix] Acker, James, NASA Satellite Data Show Decrease in Colorado River Basin Aquifers, NASA EarthData, Dec 5, 2025, https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/feature-articles/nasa-satellite-data-show-decrease-colorado-river-basin-aquifers#:~:text=This%20map%20also%20clearly%20shows,do%20not%20appreciably%20affect%20it.

[x] Castelvecchi, Davide, “Rampant Groundwater Pumping Has Changed the Tilt of Earth’s Axis,” June 21, 2023, Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rampant-groundwater-pumping-has-changed-the-tilt-of-earths-axis/#:~:text=2%20min%20read-,Rampant%20Groundwater%20Pumping%20Has%20Changed%20the%20Tilt%20of%20Earth's%20Axis,geophysicist%20at%20Seoul%20National%20University.

[xi] Lukas, Jeff, and Payton, Elizabeth, Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology State of the Science, Western Water Assessment, April 2020 (Boulder: University of Colorado).

[xii] Dancing with Deadpool, pg. 28, December 2025.

[xiii] Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, Draft Environmental Impact Statement, January 2026, Executive Summary, pg. ES-11.

[xiv] Seminole Nation v. United States, 316 U.S. 286 (1942).