← Boiling Point
Boiling Point
The Colorado Plateau at a Crossroads
00:39:16
Environmental journalist Jonathan P. Thompson joins Sammy Roth to discuss the future of the Colorado River, the state of America’s public lands, and the myths surrounding the West’s natural resources. Read Sammy’s latest column about the Colorado River: https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2025-08-14/river-rafting-in-colorado-offers-climate-lessons-for-southern-california
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- [00:01]
Sami Roth
This is an LA Times Studios podcast.
- [00:08]
Jonathan P. Thompson
My name is Sami Roth and I'm the climate columnist for the Los Angeles Times. This is Boiling Point. Growing up, I didn't really spend any time hiking. It just wasn't my parents thing. But then after college, I got a job at the newspaper in Palm Springs, California, and before too long, it felt like I was spending every other weekend climbing mountains or trekking through the desert. Even now that I'm back home in Los Angeles, I still go on annual hiking trips with some of the friends that I made in Palm Springs. Last week, three of us went out to Colorado, to the Rocky Mountains. We huffed and puffed our way up the sandy slopes of Great Sand Dunes National Park. We rafted down the Taylor river on the west side of the Continental Divide and hiked along the Arkansas river on the east side of Divide. We peered down into the Gunnison river from the most spectacular viewpoints on the north rim of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Some of those viewpoints were clouded with smoke from a wildfire on the south rim of the park. I knew before leaving for the Colorado trip that I'd inevitably come home with a lot of questions about what I'd seen about the watersheds, the dams, the energy infrastructure, the public lands. Fortunately, I had a good idea about who to ask. Jonathan P. Thompson is a Veter journalist who grew up in southwest Colorado. He's the author of several books, one of my personal favorites being Sagebrush How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. Jonathan writes an excellent newsletter called the Land Desk, and he's a contributing editor at High Country News. Before leaving for Colorado, I reached out to Jonathan and scheduled this interview for right when I got back. Unsurprisingly, the two of us had a lot to talk about. For one thing, the future of the Colorado river. Picking up from my podcast discussion Last Week with J.B. hamby. Also the Trump administration's energy policies and how they're affecting public lands across the west, not to mention the state of America's national parks under President Trump, and wildfires like the one affecting Black Canyon of the Gunnison and another fire affecting the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Jonathan and I covered a lot of ground, figuratively and literally. So here's our conversation.
- [02:38]
Southern California Edison
During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now, as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner, and more resilient.
- [03:00]
Jonathan P. Thompson
At the.
- [03:00]
Southern California Edison
Communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next storm, the next most severe event, helicopters.
- [03:27]
Sami Roth
Structures adjacent here at Bay of the.
- [03:29]
Southern California Edison
Road, we'll be ready. Learn more@sce.com disasterrecovery California ratepayers face Some.
- [03:39]
Lisa Calderon
Of the Nation's Highest Electricity costs with a decades old solar policy at the center of debate. Net energy metering was introduced in the 1990s to boost rooftop solar by letting homeowners sell excess power back to the grid at full retail rates. But now the California Public Advocate's Office reports that households without solar are subsidizing those with rooftop systems through higher electricity rates. The Fix the Cost Shift Coalition points out that this shift has led to equity concerns. Solar adoption concentrates among higher income homeowners while costs burden renters and lower income families. Assembly member Lisa Calderon authored legislation to address the cost shift while maintaining solar incentives at 76 to 82% of current levels. Support Assemblymember Calderon and help fix California's electricity crisis. Learn more@fixthecostshift.org that's fixthecostshift.org Jonathan thanks very.
- [04:35]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Much for being with us on the Boiling Point podcast.
- [04:38]
Sami Roth
Thank you for having me.
- [04:40]
Jonathan P. Thompson
So I want to start by asking you. You had a really interesting piece, or I guess I should say your father wrote a really interesting piece that you? Re shared recently on your newsletter the Land Desk. He wrote this in 1975 and it's titled An Open Letter to the People or just Open Letter to the People. And I thought it was cool that you shared this 50 years later talking about sort of how the Colorado Plateau region, sort of the border of Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, this high desert region was changing at the time and it just felt really relevant to today. And I mean a lot of it stood out and I hope folks will follow and subscribe to your newsletter and go read it. But just from the beginning here, he wrote, we cringe at the prospects of oil shale development and coal strip mining and the horrors they will visit upon our already desecrated region. We mourn our damned stilled silted rivers. We shudder at the approach of a tidal wave of outsiders drawn by money's gravity to build the dams, gasification plants, power plants, highways, transmission corridors and refineries. We see the cultural fabric of our small humane communities ripped apart and the shreds thrown to the wind as boom becomes bust we heap scorn on subdividers. Why do we cringe and shudder? Our dreams are being realized. We are getting finally what we have always wanted and feared we would never obtain. Prosperity, the good life. Those forces feel very alive today, which I assume is why you shared this. I'm hoping you could talk a little bit, one, to why you shared this now, and two, just maybe describe a little bit your family's history in this region and your history in this region.
- [06:25]
Sami Roth
Yeah, so I'll start with my family's history. So my father was a journalist and a writer, and he was born and raised in the Southwest, in Colorado, in New Mexico, and he was fourth generation in Colorado. His ancestors had migrated from Sweden many years before. This was 1975. So this was an interesting time when the energy crises were happening in the Middle East. So there were gas lines and all this stuff. And the push for energy independence was on for the first time, really. This was when, for years, the US had been importing oil and other energy sources. And beginning in the 1970s, when the energy crisis began, they really. This whole idea that we need to be energy independent sprang up. There was this rush, and it really hit the west hardest to develop domestic energy sources. It happened to coincide with when mining and oil and gas drilling and all these things were really scaling up. There was this big buildup of coal mines, power plants, coal gasification plants. That was a thing that was kind of big, is that they wanted to make natural gas out of coal or diesel out of coal. The west was becoming a sacrifice zone like it hadn't been before. And it was changing the culture, it was changing everything.
- [07:59]
Jonathan P. Thompson
And Now, I mean, 50 years later, how. How much do you feel like that has or hasn't changed? I mean, is it the same phenomenon but supercharged, or is it fundamentally different? What's going on under Trump and the Republican Party right now?
- [08:13]
Sami Roth
Well, it seemed to be changing. I mean, they call that era. Charles Wilkinson, who was a law professor at University of Colorado, he called it the big buildup on the Colorado Plateau is what he called that era. For a long time here, for the last decade, or a little bit less, maybe, I've been talking about the big breakdown is what I called it, which is where all these coal plants that were built back then, they're shutting down. There's plans to shut them down. We're moving to renewable energy. Some of the dams are even coming down that were built back then or being, you know, considering coming down. Over the last, I don't know, six months, it suddenly Feels like we're at the big buildup again. You know, I mean, it's strange and I can't say I expected it, and I don't think it's all because of Trump. But we're getting news of more and more coal plant retirements that were planned for the next few years are being canceled or delayed. The Trump administration has approved several giant coal leases, new coal leases. So we are getting this repeat of the big buildup in this strange way.
- [09:26]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Yeah. Two pieces of news that I saw this morning just getting back from vacation. One was that the, the Trump administration approved a big expansion of the Rosebud Coal Mine in Montana, which feeds the Coal Strip power plant, which by a lot of measures is the most polluting coal plant in the country. I did a big story out there a couple years ago. And then in the Four Corners region, the Four Corners coal plant run by Arizona Public Service APS just reneged on their zero carbon or net zero commitment for mid century. They walked that back and came out with something much, much more malleable. And they said they were going to close four corners by 2031. And now they're pushing that out possibly to 2038. And I mean, that's in Arizona, not Colorado, but I'm imagining that place probably affects the air quality in southern Colorado at some of the national parks that I was visiting last week.
- [10:21]
Sami Roth
Yep. Yeah, the Four Corners power plant is in New Mexico, but it's about.
- [10:24]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Oh, New Mexico. Excuse me. Thank you.
- [10:26]
Sami Roth
Yeah, it's maybe 30. It's Arizona. Public Service runs it, but it's in New Mexico. It's on the Navajo Nation, but it's. Right. It's probably as the crow flies, maybe 30 miles from Colorado, if that. Probably less than that, actually. And so it's very close to Mesa Verde National Park. It's very close to the San Juan Mountains. And Four Corners is actually, that's when my father wrote that piece and he was talking about the coal plants and stuff. He was talking about Four Corners power plants. It was built in the late 60s and it had no pollution controls. It was this massive. You know, like now when you see a coal power plant, usually, you know, you see steam coming out the smokestacks. Back then, there's pictures of it that he took that I've seen that is black smoke coming out of the smokestacks. The plume, the smoke plume from those stacks was the astronauts on one of the early space missions. They saw that that was one of the only man made, human made things that they saw on Earth.
- [11:30]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Wow.
- [11:31]
Sami Roth
That they could identify because it was such a horrible plume and that, you know, it took. There was a big outcry and certainly in the early 70s against that. But they continued to build coal plants, and that one did not get pollution controls until, I don't know, probably the late 70s to begin with. And so here we were, we thought it was going to shut down, you know, and its neighboring plant, the San Juan Generating Station, shut down in 2022. And so the air has been getting cleaner. So we thought Four Corners, finally, the flagship, that. That was going to shut down soon as well. You know, Maybe they said 2031, but it kind of looked like it might be sooner because pnm, Public Service Company of New Mexico, they are pulling out of their ownership and they are a pretty big owner of that plant. And everybody thought, well, that's it. It's going to shut down. But now it looks like it's going to keep going maybe for quite a while.
- [12:31]
Jonathan P. Thompson
We're sitting here talking about coal plants and oil and gas development, and there's just such an incredible contrast, as you well know, in these places in the Four Corners region in the Colorado Plateau. I mean, I spent the last week hiking in national parks and in national forests and rafting on rivers and, you know, the specific places that I was visiting, if I didn't know any better from my life as a reporter, I wouldn't know any of this, you know, dirty energy stuff was going on because I didn't see any of it, the particular places I was in. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to that contrast between, you know, these are these sacrifice zones as you just described them. But there are also some of the places that are, you know, have been in ways most. I don't know if most preserved is the right word. But, you know, there's a reason that tourists like me, you know, flock from Los Angeles to go spend our weeks off, you know, hiking and hiking and camping and river rafting in these areas. Right.
- [13:24]
Sami Roth
Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, and I think that there's. There is a, you know, we call them sacrifice zones, but it's like sacrificing for what? And, you know, I think that there is an element of like, of maybe not really a conscious decision, but of saying, you know what? You guys can have that. You can have the San Juan Basin, which is this area of New Mexico which has been drilled forever. You can. You can have. Even environmentalists, you know, have said kind of, you can have that stuff down there, but we want, you Know, we want the wilderness, we want the mountains to be preserved. I think for a long time there was this dynamic of if, if not spoken deals like that, there was sort of an understanding like, okay, you know, one of them that, that is pretty well known, is that the Sierra Club back in the 60s said, you know, what if you don't build a dam in the Grand Canyon, we support you building a giant coal fired power plant. Yeah, I mean, that was kind of a strange dynamic that that has happened and now we'll see how it goes. But, you know, the result was that you do have wilderness areas in a lot of mountain parts of Colorado that set those areas aside and they're never going to be developed. So you don't see them when you go there as a tourist. You only see them if you go kind of off the beaten path into some of these lowland areas that really are sacrifice zones.
- [14:57]
Jonathan P. Thompson
I think the thing that amazed me the most, and this always happens to me when I travel in the west and especially in the Colorado River Basin. And I'm curious if you think this is like just, if this is just totally normal to you. But me as an Angeleno, you know, I go out and I spend time on like, you know, in this trip, it was the Taylor river and the Gunnison River. It's like, wow, you know, I flew several hours to get here. I drove a couple more hours to get to these remote places. And okay, I'm thinking this water ultimately flows to the Colorado river through Lake Powell, down to, through the Grand Canyon, into Lake Mead, and then, you know, goes 240 miles through the Colorado River Aqueduct, you know, through all these pump stations, through Mount San Jacinto to a reservoir and then eventually to my tap in Los Angeles. And here I am, you know, rafting on it in Colorado. I mean, should, should Southern Californians, is that important for us to understand? Like, as someone who's actually from this place, like, is that valuable?
- [15:53]
Sami Roth
I mean, I think it does matter. Yeah, I think, I think it would be great if people thought about that. I mean, I lived for many years in a town called Silverton, which is basically, it was the headwaters to numerous rivers like right around there within, I think within like a, maybe a 15 mile radius. And you know, we, it was interesting because this town, it was mining town, it was founded in 1874, but the town father's founders did not get their water rights adjudicated until the 1930s because they took it for granted. They're like, we're the headwaters. We don't need to ask anybody permission to use this water. So the result has been that during drought years, they are in danger of having a call on the river where they have to turn off the municipal water in order to feed downstream senior rights water holders, you know, because of the way western water law works. So that's just this weird thing. You know, you've got these headwaters communities, and they don't have the right to use the water that's coming from right there.
- [17:00]
Jonathan P. Thompson
So they're behind, like the Imperial Valley in California in the line.
- [17:03]
Sami Roth
Oh, yeah, they're way behind the Imperial Valley, and they're behind water users just down, you know, 50, 60 miles downstream, just farmers and stuff. So, I mean, I guess I just use that as a way to illustrate how strange western water law is, but also that, you know, one of the things when we, when I lived there is people took great pride in being a headwaters community and did feel like, yeah, it would be nice if people downstream kind of acknowledged us that what we do up here is going to affect them. So, yeah, I do think it's good when people kind of connect the dots, you know, in part because then they can better understand where the scarcity is coming from on the Colorado river right now, which in large part is due to too many people are using it. But also, the snowpack is in. The mountains in Colorado is waning.
- [18:01]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Yeah. So you mentioned the conditions this year. What's the snowpack been like in the Rocky Mountains that feed the Colorado? And I mean, I was looking at the drought monitor maps. Things look like they're hot and drought, like right now, at least in the places I was visiting. But what kind of year has it been so far?
- [18:18]
Sami Roth
It's been a bad year. You know, it started out the winter. The water year, you know, as you know, starts out on October 1st and goes to September 30th. So it started out in October and November. It looked like it was going to be a banner year. There was a lot of snow. I was looking at the mountains in October, and I was just like, yeah, this is going to be a good one. It was as snowy as it often is in December. And then it just stopped. It's like somebody turned it off, and it got drier and drier, and the spring was very warm and dry. And then the summer has been runoff. Spring runoff was weak, for sure. It also peaked earlier than usual, which isn't good because that means that basically there's less water running into the reservoirs later on when it's needed. But the summer has been both Hot and kind of unusually dry. The monsoon pattern which usually has reached, usually comes in maybe mid to late July, has not arrived yet in most of the southwest. Meaning that stream flows are really low. I mean, I was just looking at some of the stream flows in southwest Colorado and they're, you know, it's getting to the point where the rafting companies like are going to have to shut down if, if it's not a dam controlled thing where you can get extra water from the dam. And Lake Powell has, you know, we had, in 2023 was a big snow year and Lake Powell really recovered a lot. 2024 was, was an average snow year, so things were still good. But now Lake Powell is now dropping pretty quickly and it's likely to be back to. Right now we're at levels that we haven't seen since 2021, which was a terrible year.
- [20:09]
Jonathan P. Thompson
I was just looking at like what, 30, 30% as of today? Something like that.
- [20:14]
Sami Roth
Something like that, yeah. Yeah. And so, and if you look at the curve like the graph, it's dropping very quickly in a way that usually doesn't, you know, just, it's dropping faster than it should be. If we have another bad winter or even a, probably an average winter, it could be bad within the next year or two as far as reaching the minimum power pool, which is the minimum amount for generating hydroelectricity. And once that happens, you know, there's all kinds of problems with Glen Canyon Dam.
- [20:46]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Right. Everyone's trying to avoid a situation where it gets so low that it can't generate electricity because then the politics get much sharper after that point too. I mean, the political tension at which people are arguing over what to do, it just gets much worse after that.
- [21:00]
Sami Roth
Yeah, yeah. I mean, one thing is the electricity, you know, that's huge because it does generate a huge amount of electricity and that this cheap power for a lot of people. But also it funds various government things. In addition to that, there's an engineering problem which is once it drops below that point, then the water has to, you have to release water out of these different outlets and they were not made for long term water releases and they could eventually deteriorate and all kinds of bad stuff could happen. So we want to avoid that.
- [21:41]
Jonathan P. Thompson
We'll be back after a quick break.
- [21:51]
Southern California Edison
During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires, Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next storm, the next most severe event, we'll be ready. Learn more@sce.com disasterrecovery Today is the worst.
- [22:51]
Lisa Calderon
Day of Abby's life. The 17 year old cradles her newborn son in her arms.
- [22:57]
Sami Roth
They all saw how much I loved him.
- [22:59]
Lisa Calderon
They didn't have to take him from me. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and forced them to secretly place their babies for adoption in hidden corners across America. It's still happening. My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will. They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me. The godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern Evangelical Rite and the founder of Liberty University, where powerful men emboldened by their faith determine who gets to be a parent and who must give their child away. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [23:51]
Jonathan P. Thompson
We had on the podcast last week J.B. hamby, a member of the Board of Directors of the Imperial Irrigation District and California's lead negotiator in these interstate talks from the seven Colorado river states who are all trying to figure out how do we deal with shortages, who has to cut how much when there is inevitably the next shortage and the one after that, and the one after that. He seemed optimistic that there's this new idea that's being floated to allocate shortages based on how much water is actually available, rather than the historic 1922 Colorado River Compact, which essentially says here's how much water everybody gets. The upper basin states have to give this much water to the lower basin states. I'm curious what you make of it. I'm sure you've been following these negotiations closely. It all kind of hinges on if there's a shortage or when there's a shortage, because it's inevitable. How much pain does each different state take? What is Colorado? What do Colorado and Utah basically have to give up versus what do California and Arizona have to give up? What do you think? Do you think there's progress being made? There are different perspectives in the upper basin states versus the lower basin states. I'm curious what you make of it.
- [25:11]
Sami Roth
Yeah, I think the idea of dividing up the water and the river by percentages rather than promising a set amount of water makes sense. I mean, that's, you know, that's the logical way to do it. Of course, that's very difficult to do because you don't really know how much water is in the river until the year is over. So trying to figure that out in advance is pretty difficult. But. But it does make sense in a lot of ways. But, you know, whether they're going to come to an agreement or not on that is, is up in the air. I have my doubts in a way because I think that the lower basin, California, Nevada and Arizona are still going to demand a certain amount of water every year. They're going to demand a minimum amount of water being released from Glen Canyon Dam every year even if they do do this deal. And the upper basin states, I think, may not go for that because that's kind of a catching point now is that the Colorado River Compact says that a certain amount of water has to be released out of Glen Canyon Dam every year no matter how much water is in the river. And that means that the upper basin states end up taking the cuts, whereas the lower basin states are guaranteed a certain amount of water.
- [26:31]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Right. So you're kind of stuck on the same problem.
- [26:35]
Sami Roth
Right, Right. So you can't. Unless you actually, you know, really say there is no minimums. You just. It's just going to be like this. You guys get 50, we get 50. We're going to figure it out. Using various calculations of the previous three years and forecasts and that kind of stuff, we're going to figure that out and that's how it's going to be. That would be one thing. And I think it, you know, it might work, but I don't think that the players are going to all go for that. I don't think the lower basin would go for that because some years there's, there's less water in the river than the lower basin actually gets, you know, meaning that that's why Lake Powell is, is running is only 30% of full, because they've drain it for that purpose.
- [27:19]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Right. To send water to California and Arizona and Nevada down to Lake Mead.
- [27:22]
Sami Roth
Right. To meet that minimum amount. And so the idea behind the reservoir was that there would be big years in between when they could refill it. But that hasn't happened. And so now we're in a position where it's like, yeah, it's going to be tough to come to an agreement, I think. And I don't, I don't know what that's going to mean, whether the, the feds are going to have to step in and if they do, how many lawsuits that's going to trigger.
- [27:47]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Well, to put, to put kind of a fine point on it. I mean, as I understand it, the historical, or I'll try to articulate this. The historical grievance that Colorado and the other upper basin states have had is that California and Arizona in particular have, California in particular has always used sort of historically used more water than it was legally allowed. And even though it's gotten that down now to what its allocation is supposed to be, it continues to use its sort of full share. And yes, California has done a good job of conserving, but from Colorado's perspective, it still uses a lot less water than it's legally entitled to. And it does take those cuts in dry years. They just don't have the water. And yet they still have to send water downstream to California so that California can use the water to serve all of the development that's happened in California. As a Colorado person, I'm curious what you make of that. Is it fair for Colorado to have this perspective of we should continue to maintain the right to eventually use more of our water and we've been taking all these cuts anyway, or is that an unrealistic perspective?
- [28:57]
Sami Roth
You know, I, I, I mean, in one piece, I kind of compare it to a potato farm. Let's say two siblings inherit a potato farm. And in the beginning they say, okay, sibling A, Joe, he's going to run the, the potato farm. He's going to live there and run it. And Sarah, she's not, she's going to live somewhere else. But part of the deal when they inherit is that they promise, Joe promises that he will give Sarah 7.5 tons of potatoes every year no matter what. Right. So if you have a bad year and there's only, and the idea is that the potato farm produces 15 tons of potatoes every year. So they both get half. But because they've made this deal where he has to give 7.5 tons to his sister if there's a bad year and the only 7.5 tons are, are produced out of that potato farm, he gets nothing out of it. He takes the cuts. So that's how the Colorado River Compact is written right now, is that the, the lower basin is always, they're guaranteed to get a certain amount of water. The upper basin, they're supposed to get the same amount of water, but if there's less water in the river, they take the cuts because of that. So that seems unfair. At the same time, you know, it's hard to come up with a different way to do it. And coming up with like a 50, 50 split of what's actually in the river will result in the lower basin taking massive cuts because they're getting 7.5 million acre feet a year. So if there's only, let's say, 10 or even less, let's say there's 8 million acre feet in the river and they only get 4 million acre feet, well, that's going to be like basically cutting their water use in half. I mean, who's going to take the hits for that? Who's going to pay? And it's probably going to be Arizona, but, you know, because they have junior water rights to California, so then you're going to open up these massive fights downstream. So it's, it's, I don't know, you know, I mean, it's really hard to come up with a solution. And, I mean, I'll bring up one more thing because it's kind of interesting. In the upper basin, we kind of badmouth the lower basin, say, yeah, we don't want to send you all of our water, but if we don't send them out of water, that's less water that's running down the Grand Canyon, running through the Grand Canyon, and that's less water for the ecology of the river. You know, if Glen Canyon Dam suddenly were to close it up, not only would California not get their water, but the Grand Canyon and the fish and the ecology would not get their water either.
- [31:34]
Jonathan P. Thompson
I'm glad you bring up the Grand Canyon, because I also did want to ask you, you know, so I got to two national parks last week. I got to Black Canyon of the Gunnison, which was incredible, despite the fact that I could only get to the North Rim because the South Rim is closed for a wildfire right now. And also Great Sand Dunes, which I was very pleasantly surprised to find out was in the Rio Grande watershed, where all the water flows down to the Gulf of Mexico. Shout out, Gulf of Mexico. Didn't realize I would be in not just right. If there's, if there's enough water to get all the way. I didn't realize I would be in both the, not just the Colorado and the Mississippi watersheds, but also the Rio Grande. But there's been so much written and reported right now about the Trump administration laying off national park staff and trying to rewrite history in national park visitor centers and threatening to remove educational signage that does not portray American history and American historical figures in the most positive way possible. Light some terrifying stuff, I guess. I'm curious what, if anything, you've seen or heard in this part of the west and the places that you know best, if there's anything that's been stood out to you as especially concerning or problematic at national parks as a result of the Trump administration's actions, or alternately, is everything fine so far? What have you been seeing or hearing?
- [32:54]
Sami Roth
I mean, one thing I have seen is that visitation in national parks, in a lot of the big national parks like Zion and so forth, is down a little bit or has kind of dropped in June. That's even before these fires like at the Grand Canyon and Black Canyon started. So it's related to something else. I've heard stories. I haven't seen anything firsthand. I've heard things about toilets being dirty in national parks and just fewer staff to deal with, with crowds and that sort of thing. I don't think a lot of it has had time to really take hold yet. A lot of the consequences that they're going to ripple down over time. But another thing is it's hard to even track how many National Park Service employees were laid off or fired and how many were actually rehired and how many are working or getting paid but not working. You know, it's a very, it's kind of confusing and hard to track all that. So it's, it's, you know, it's hard to say, like, okay, Zion is this many people short or the Black Canyon is this many people short right now. But I haven't heard of any sort of catastrophes yet, like, oh, somebody, you know, fell off a cliff and there was no search and rescue to come get them or something like that. Like, those are the things that people worry about. I haven't heard of anything like that yet. That's good.
- [34:22]
Jonathan P. Thompson
I'm glad that's the answer to the question. Let me try a different catastrophe question. Wildfires mentioned couldn't get to the south rim of Black Canyon because of the fire. A lot of folks have probably heard more. You know, this one's been more in the news nationally that the north rim of the Grand Canyon has been devastated by a pretty terrible wildfire recently that's destroyed a lot of historic structures and other visitor facilities. I mean, have you, have you noticed changes in wildfire activities recently or over the, over the years on the, in the Four Corners region?
- [34:55]
Sami Roth
Oh, yeah. I mean, over the last 20 years, really, there has been a major change in wildfires for sure. Up until 2002, the biggest wildfire in Colorado in recorded history in Colorado was like, I think 20,000 acres. It was actually between Durango and Silverton called the Lime Creek Fire. That happened in 1879.
- [35:18]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Coming from California, that sounds tiny. 20,000 acres.
- [35:20]
Sami Roth
Yeah, well, now it sounds, now it's not even on the list of the top 10 in Colorado because starting in 2002, the fires like just every year, another record, you know, the record falls again. Now the record is close to 200,000 acres, I think. And yeah, that 20,000 acre fire, people don't even remember it or talk about it anymore. So that's just an example of. Yeah, like it's, it's crazy how not how many fires there are, but just the, the, the severity and the, the size of them. And the one on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, you know, I mean, it's been burning for over a month and it's up to 150,000 acres now, I think. Just crazy. And the lack of the monsoon season without any rain is really exacerbating the problem this year, too.
- [36:14]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Yeah, I remember when I first reached out and told you that I was going to be going and visiting this part of the world and thinking you might have some suggestions for me. One of the things you said was just be warned, there's going to be monsoon rain every afternoon. Except for a really brief sprinkle on that Crested Butte to Aspen trail for a couple of minutes, not a drop of rain. It was, it was nothing.
- [36:34]
Sami Roth
Yeah, and that's, that to me is, you know, unusual. And, and who knows whether that's a result of climate change or whether it's just, you know, a strange year. But it's, it seems to be happening more and more where there is, you know, occasionally have years where there really is no monsoon season or years where it just comes late or it's just weak. But compared to when I was a kid growing up in southwest Colorado, it was like clockwork. Come maybe mid July, late July, every afternoon it would be super hot all day. And every afternoon the clouds would build huge downpour, lightning, thunder. I mean, it was great. I loved it. And then it would clear up. But if you went backpacking in the mountains, you just prepared for that. You said, okay, we're going to get rained on every single day. And that's just life. And now it's either coming later, not coming at all, or if it does come, it's pretty moderate.
- [37:39]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Big picture, how would you sum up what climate change means for the future of the Four Corners region and what does that mean for the future of the west and for those of us who live in California?
- [37:51]
Sami Roth
Well, you know, I mean, whether or not there will be more snow or not, we don't know. I mean, you know, the models all change. Some say that there's going to be more precipitation, some say less. But regardless, the. It's going to be warmer. I mean, it already is warmer. And that melts the snow faster. It causes more evaporation of the snow. And that snowpack in the Colorado Mountains and the interior West Mountains is like the, that's the big reservoir that supplies the Colorado river. And if that's not there, there is no Colorado River. So I think, you know, we're going to see less and less water no matter what happens. As far as precipitation goes, we're going to see less and less water in the Colorado river because those, those summer rainstorms aren't as important as the winter snows and as the winter snow accumulating and staying around longer in the spring. So that's what we're going to lose, I think, simply because of the warming.
- [38:51]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Temperatures, you know, in addition to climate change and water in the Colorado. Just to sort of circle back to where we start. I also think that it's important that folks, you know, living on the coast in California and living in other big cities not forget, you know, the role that the sort of interior and rural parts of the west play in supplying energy to the region and empowering, you know, the cities with, you know, at the moment with a lot of coal plants and hydropower and hopefully in the future with a lot more solar and wind. You know, that's, that's something that I've written a lot about and that, that you've obviously written a lot about. I want to just bring up some, one last bit that your, your dad wrote in this, this open letter 50 years ago that still feels quite relevant. He wrote, let us resist the preservation of our quote unquote traditional values as surely as we must resist the drag lines. Let us resist learning our colorful lines as surely as we must resist the destruction of the Colorado Plateau in a last brief, desperate, doomed attempt to save our fossil fuel addiction from its last agony. Amazing to me that he wrote that 50 years ago. Could you just explain a little bit what he was talking about there?
- [40:05]
Sami Roth
Well, I think he was talking about in a way, when coal, fossil fuel pushers speak, they're always talking about this traditional, this old way, or on the Colorado Plateau when you're talking about preserving, keeping uranium mining going, they're talking about our heritage, this is our culture. These are traditions that they've been doing for a long time, but that doesn't mean that you should continue to do them. So I think that's part of it. I think the other part of it is just the myth of the American west that we've created and these ideas of what we. The picture that people have in their mind of what the west is, which is sort of like this blank canvas where people can come in and not only reinvent themselves, but also kind of ravage for the natural resources. And that's one of the settler colonial tradition, I guess you could say. And that's something else that we should do away with.
- [41:10]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Well, one of the most interesting things to me is always when people figure out how much we knew, even at the time, the foundations of climate science coming from the 1800s and research showing that even when the Colorado River Compact was negotiated in 1922, that they. They really knew that not that much water was available even then. And they conveniently ignored it. Like, you know, these traditions were built upon, you know, conveniently ignoring inconvenient truths. So here we are in 2025, still trying to learn that lesson.
- [41:43]
Sami Roth
Yeah. And we're still holding on to those old traditions, you know, in spite of ourselves.
- [41:49]
Jonathan P. Thompson
Jonathan, thank you very much for being with us on the Boiling Point podcast.
- [41:53]
Sami Roth
Thank you so much.
- [41:58]
Jonathan P. Thompson
If you want to sign up for Jonathan's newsletter, the Land Desk, you can find it by going to landesk.org that's L, A, N D D E S K. O, R G. I also had some more reflections on the Colorado trip in this week's Boiling Point newsletter. If you're interested, there's a link in the show notes and you can sign up to get Boiling Point in your inbox every week by going to latimes.com boilingpoint thank you for listening to Boiling Point. I'm your host, Sammy Roth. My producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shiflet. Sound design and original music by Jonathan Shiflett. Elijah Wolfson is our editor. Denise Callahan is our studio manager. Ben Church is our Production manager. Nick Norton is our engineer. Special thanks to LA Times Studio President, Anna Magzanian. President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argentieri, and Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Boiling Point is executive produced by Darius Derekshon and created by me, Sami Roth.
- [43:15]
Lisa Calderon
My name is Madison McGee. From LA Times Studios comes its latest series, LA Crimes. From deep dives into the Menendez brothers to conversations about why Bravo TV seems to be a hotbed of white collar criminals. We'll cover it all. We'll speak with LA Times reporters and others in the true crime industry to put a lens not just on these cases, but on our own culture's fascination with them and what that says about us. Tune in every Wednesday wherever you stream your podcast.