The wolf was one of 15 relocated from Canada to Colorado in January and is the second of that group to die recently in Wyoming. Four weeks ago, federal authorities shot and killed a wolf that was suspected to have preyed on five sheep in north-central Wyoming.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife wrote in a news release Friday that it became aware of the latest death Wednesday and worked with Wyoming Game and Fish to retrieve the wolf’s tracking collar.

CPW spokesperson Travis Duncan referred questions about the incident to Wyoming Game and Fish, which could not be reached for comment Saturday. In its news release, the Colorado agency wrote that “Wyoming state law prevents further detail from being shared.”

“Wolves are known to travel long distances to find food or mates, including into other states,” the agency wrote. “CPW does not comment on wildlife movements, operations or regulations in other states.”

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A new executive order from President Donald Trump that’s part of his effort to invigorate energy production raises the possibility that his Department of Justice will go to court against state climate change laws aimed at slashing planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuels.

Trump’s order, signed Tuesday, comes as U.S. electricity demand ramps up to meet the growth of artificial intelligence and cloud computing applications, as well as federal efforts to expand high-tech manufacturing. It also coincides with “climate superfund” legislation gaining traction in various states.

Trump has declared a “ national energy emergency ” and ordered his attorney general to take action against states that may be illegally overreaching their authority in how they regulate energy development.

“American energy dominance is threatened when State and local governments seek to regulate energy beyond their constitutional or statutory authorities,” Trump said in the order.

He said the attorney general should focus on state laws targeting climate change, a broad order that unmistakably puts liberal states in the crosshairs of Trump’s Department of Justice.

Michael Gerrard, director of the Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said it would be an “extraordinarily bold move” for the federal government to go to court to try to overturn a state climate law.

Gerrard said the quickest path for Trump’s Department of Justice is to try to join ongoing lawsuits where courts are deciding whether states or cities are exceeding their authority by trying to force the fossil fuel industry to pay for the cost of damages from climate change.

Democrats say they won’t back down

Democratic governors vowed to keep fighting climate change.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom accused Trump of “turning back the clock” on the climate and said his state’s efforts to reduce pollution “won’t be derailed by a glorified press release masquerading as an executive order.”

The group Climate Mayors, which includes the mayors of America’s biggest cities, said in a statement from its chair, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, that the federal government is overreaching its authority and ignoring the “enormous costs of continued environmental destruction and the political and social harm of retreating American leadership.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, cochairs of the U.S. Climate Alliance, which includes 22 governors, said they “will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis.”

Climate superfund laws are gaining traction

Vermont and New York are currently fighting challenges in federal courts to climate superfund laws passed last year. Trump suggested the laws “extort” payments from energy companies and “threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security.”

Both are modeled on the 45-year-old federal superfund law, which taxed petroleum and chemical companies to pay to clean up of sites polluted by toxic waste. In similar fashion, the state climate laws are designed to force major fossil fuel companies to pay into state-based funds based on their past greenhouse gas emissions.

Several other Democratic-controlled states, including New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon and California, are considering similar measures.

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil and natural gas industries, applauded Trump’s order that it said would “protect American energy from so-called ‘climate superfunds.’”

“Directing the Department of Justice to address this state overreach will help restore the rule of law and ensure activist-driven campaigns do not stand in the way of ensuring the nation has access to an affordable and reliable energy supply,” it said.

Court battles are already ongoing

The American Petroleum Institute, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filed the lawsuit against Vermont. The lawsuit against New York was filed by West Virginia, along with several coal, gas and oil interests and 21 other mostly Republican-led states, including Texas, Ohio and Georgia.

Make Polluters Pay, a coalition of consumer and anti-fossil fuel groups, vowed to fight Trump’s order and accused fossil fuel billionaires of convincing Trump to launch an assault on states.

The order, it said, demonstrates the “corporate capture of government” and “weaponizes the Justice Department against states that dare to make polluters pay for climate damage.”

Separately, the Department of Justice could join lawsuits in defense of fossil fuel industries being sued, Gerrard said.

Those lawsuits include ones filed by Honolulu, Hawaii, and dozens of cities and states seeking billions of dollars in damages from things like wildfires, rising sea levels and severe storms.

In the last three months, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to get involved in a couple climate-themed lawsuits.

One was brought by oil and gas companies asking it to block Honolulu’s lawsuit. Another was brought by Alabama and Republican attorneys general in 18 other states aimed at blocking lawsuits against the oil and gas industry from Democratic-led states, including California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Trump’s order set off talk in state Capitols around the U.S.

That includes Pennsylvania, where Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro is contesting a court challenge to a regulation that would make it the first major fossil fuel-producing state to force power plant owners pay for greenhouse gas emissions.

John Quigley, a former Pennsylvania environmental protection secretary and a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, wondered if the Department of Justice would begin challenging all sorts of state water and air pollution laws.

“This kind of an order knows no bounds,” Quigley said. “It’s hard to say where this could end up.”

Associated Press reporter Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report. Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter

The Colorado Springs council on Tuesday voted 6-3 to send the question regarding the annexation of the Karman Line development to a special municipal election on June 17. The council also could have nixed its Jan. 28 decision to approve the annexation.

Several council members said letting voters decide the future of the annexation made the most sense of the two options, though they expressed hesitation about spending more than $500,000 to run the election.

The citywide vote provides an opportunity to start a conversation about what the future growth of Colorado Springs should look like — and how the city could remain vibrant while considering limited water resources, several council members said.

“I think there really is a central tension that we’re facing right now as a community, as a city on the Front Range,” said Councilwoman Nancy Henjum, who previously voted against annexing the development. “We’re a canary in the coal mine. We need more housing, but we have a finite amount of water.”

Opposition to the development included Colorado Springs and El Paso County residents concerned about growth and the risk of spreading city resources too thin. Much of the 1,900-acre development east of the city would not touch current city boundaries and would be concentrated nearly four miles from the city border.

Farmers downstream on the Arkansas River also told the council that they worried the annexation would increase pressure on Colorado Springs Utilities to source more water from the region’s farms. The loss of water would shrink even further the agriculture industry that is the backbone of the valley, resulting in far-reaching consequences, farmers said.

The Denver Post reported Sunday on the tension over limited water supplies in the valley and Colorado Springs’ growth.

Already, Colorado Springs Utilities estimates that annually, it will need 34,000 more acre-feet of water than it currently has — or 11 billion gallons — to meet population growth for when the city fully develops inside its current boundaries, estimated to occur around 2070. Every annexation of land into the state’s second-largest city adds to that future gap.

Karman Line would need approximately 1,672 acre-feet of water a year, or 645 million gallons. An acre foot is the amount of water it takes to cover an acre in a foot of water and is generally enough to provide for two Colorado families’ yearly needs.

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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The nearly 2,700-mile Keystone oil pipeline was shut down Tuesday morning after it ruptured in North Dakota, halting the flow of millions of gallons of crude oil from Canada to refineries in the U.S. and potentially leading to higher gasoline prices.

South Bow, a liquid pipeline business that manages the pipeline, said it shut down the pipeline after control center leak detection systems detected a pressure drop in the system. The spill is confined to an agricultural field in a rural area, about 60 miles southwest of Fargo.

“The affected segment has been isolated, and operations and containment resources have been mobilized to site,” the company said. “Our primary focus right now is the safety of onsite personnel and mitigating risk to the environment.”

The pipeline transported an average 624,000 barrels — or more than 26 million gallons — per day in 2024, according to Canadian regulators. It stretches 2,689 miles (4327 kilometers) from Alberta, Canada, to Texas.

Prices at the gas pump could rise in the coming days

The pipeline’s shutdown could quickly lead to higher gasoline prices in the Midwest, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president for energy and innovation at the University of Houston.

It could raise prices at the pump within one or two days, but will have a greater impact on diesel and jet fuel, Krishnamoorti said. The Keystone pipeline transports a large amount of a unique, heavy crude that only is available from limited sources, he said.

“The refineries run on blends of crude so that they can get the product line that they want to deliver, whether it is gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc., and not having the supply of heavy crude is going to tilt their ability to make diesel and jet fuel,” he said. “They will make less of diesel and jet fuel when they have less of the heavy crude.”

Higher diesel costs could lead to grocery price increases because diesel trucks transport those products, he said.

The lead petroleum analyst at gasoline price tracker GasBuddy, Patrick De Haan, said that typically refineries have at least a few days supply of crude oil on hand that will insulate them from immediate impacts from the shut down. But if the shutdown continues more than a few days or a week it could become problematic.

Mark LaCour, editor-in-chief of the Oil and Gas Global Network, said he doesn’t expect gas prices to immediately increase because the major refineries served by the Keystone pipeline have millions of barrels in storage.

“Even if the pipeline gets cut off completely for, say, 2 or 3 weeks, they have enough crude to continue refining for gasoline,” LaCour said.

The pipeline was shut down within two minutes of a ‘bang’

It wasn’t clear what caused the rupture of the underground pipeline or the amount of crude oil released into the field. An employee working at the site near Fort Ransom heard a “mechanical bang” and shut down the pipeline within about two minutes, said Bill Suess, spill investigation program manager with the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.

Oil surfaced about 300 yards (274 meters) south of a pump station in a field and emergency personnel responded, Suess said.

No people or structures were affected by the spill, he said. A nearby stream that only flows during part of the year was not affected but was blocked off and isolated as a precaution, he said. The Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is sending a team to investigate the cause of the leak.

Fort Ransom, a city of less than 100 people, is in a hilly, forested area of southeastern North Dakota known for scenic views and outdoor recreation. A state park and hiking trails are nearby.

It’s unclear at what rate the 30-inch (0.8-meter) pipeline was flowing, but even at two minutes “it’s going to have a fairly good volume,” Suess said. “But … we’ve had much, much bigger spills,” including one involving the same pipeline a few years ago in Walsh County, North Dakota, he said.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that huge,” Suess said.

The pipeline has a history of past ruptures

The Keystone Pipeline was constructed in 2010 at a cost of $5.2 billion and carries crude oil across Saskatchewan and Manitoba through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas. Though the pipeline was constructed by TC Energy, it is now managed by South Bow as of 2024.

A proposed extension to the pipeline called Keystone XL would have transported crude oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast, but it was ultimately abandoned by the company in 2021 after years of protests from environmental activists and Indigenous communities over environmental concerns.

After a spill, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is responsible for investigating the root cause of the issue and any lack of compliance. The agency, which regulates liquid and natural gas pipelines, lost several senior-level executives earlier this year as part of President Donald Trump’s federal cuts.

PHMSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bill Caram, executive director at industry watchdog Pipeline Safety Trust, said the organization already was “an under-resourced, underfunded agency.”

“To lose anyone will have an impact on safety,” he said.

After the last major Keystone pipeline spill in Kansas in December 2022, sections of the pipeline were offline for a little over three weeks before it resumed operating at a lower pressure.

That spill of nearly 13,000 barrels of oil flowed into a creek traversing a pasture. An engineering consulting firm said the bend in the pipeline at the site had been “overstressed” since being installed in 2010, likely because of construction activity altering the land around the pipe. TC Energy said a faulty weld in the line’s bend caused a crack that exacerbated over time.

The Pipeline Safety Trust said this latest leak adds to the troubled history of the Keystone pipeline, which has had 13 significant incidents in the 15 years it has been operating.

Raza reported from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed from Omaha, Nebraska.

Three genetically engineered wolves that may resemble extinct dire wolves are trotting, sleeping and howling in an undisclosed secure location in the U.S., according to the company that aims to bring back lost species.

The wolf pups, which range in age from three to six months old, have long white hair, muscular jaws and already weigh in at around 80 pounds — on track to reach 140 pounds at maturity, researchers at Colossal Biosciences reported Monday.

Dire wolves, which went extinct more than 10,000 years ago, are much larger than gray wolves, their closest living relatives today.

Independent scientists said this latest effort doesn’t mean dire wolves are coming back to North American grasslands any time soon.

“All you can do now is make something look superficially like something else”— not fully revive extinct species, said Vincent Lynch, a biologist at the University at Buffalo who was not involved in the research.

Colossal scientists learned about specific traits that dire wolves possessed by examining ancient DNA from fossils. The researchers studied a 13,000 year-old dire wolf tooth unearthed in Ohio and a 72,000 year-old skull fragment found in Idaho, both part of natural history museum collections.

Then the scientists took blood cells from a living gray wolf and used CRISPR to genetically modify them in 20 different sites, said Colossal’s chief scientist Beth Shapiro. They transferred that genetic material to an egg cell from a domestic dog. When ready, embryos were transferred to surrogates, also domestic dogs, and 62 days later the genetically engineered pups were born.

Colossal has previously announced similar projects to genetically alter cells from living species to create animals resembling extinct woolly mammoths, dodos and others.

Though the pups may physically resemble young dire wolves, “what they will probably never learn is the finishing move of how to kill a giant elk or a big deer,” because they won’t have opportunities to watch and learn from wild dire wolf parents, said Colossal’s chief animal care expert Matt James.

Colossal also reported today that it had cloned four red wolves using blood drawn from wild wolves of the southeastern U.S.’s critically endangered red wolf population. The aim is to bring more genetic diversity into the small population of captive red wolves, which scientists are using to breed and help save the species.

This technology may have broader application for conservation of other species because it’s less invasive than other techniques to clone animals, said Christopher Preston, a wildlife expert at the University of Montana who was not involved in the research. But it still requires a wild wolf to be sedated for a blood draw and that’s no simple feat, he added.

Colossal CEO Ben Lamm said the team met with officials from the U.S. Interior Department in late March about the project. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum praised the work on X on Monday as a “thrilling new era of scientific wonder” even as outside scientists said there are limitations to restoring the past.

“Whatever ecological function the dire wolf performed before it went extinct, it can’t perform those functions” on today’s existing landscapes, said Buffalo’s Lynch.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The granting of a temporary window for construction follows an order late Thursday by U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello blocking Denver Water’s expansion of Gross Reservoir outside Nederland and barring further construction work to raise the height of the dam. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated federal environmental law during the permitting process and must redo major permits, the judge ruled, siding with environmentalists who sued over the project.

In response to the order, Denver Water asked the judge to allow dam construction to continue while the utility appealed her decision.

“Denver Water faces enormous irreparable harm from the order stopping ongoing project construction, which may threaten the safety of the half-constructed dam; require Denver Water to quickly lay off hundreds of construction workers; impose millions in additional materials and equipment costs on Denver Water and its ratepayers; and increase the risk of water shortages,” lawyers for the utility wrote in their request.

Arguello denied the utility’s request to allow construction to continue during the appeal but granted the 14-day stay on her order blocking all construction. After a yet-to-be-scheduled hearing, she will decide exactly how much more construction to allow to make the existing dam structurally sound.

Denver Water — which provides water for 1.5 million people in the metro — is legally required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to finish the Gross Reservoir expansion project in 2027 because the dam is also a hydroelectric facility. I

f construction is delayed, the utility will not be able to meet that deadline, exposing it to financial penalties, the loss of its hydropower license or criminal prosecution, Denver Water’s attorneys wrote.

Denver Water planned to raise the dam’s height by 131 feet to triple the reservoir’s capacity from 42,000 acre-feet to 120,000 acre-feet — enough water to serve approximately 156,000 additional households. The utility began the permitting process for the project in 2002 and started construction in 2022.

Construction on the dam was slated to begin again for the spring season this week, according to the utility. The dam currently rises to 60% of its planned final height but has no spillway and other critical infrastructure needed to help it respond to flooding.

“Abandonment of construction efforts — even temporarily — could result in flooding or structural deterioration, presenting unnecessary safety risks,” Denver Water’s attorneys wrote.

Arguello in her Sunday order reiterated her criticism of Denver Water’s decision to start construction even though it faced challenges to the legality of the project.

“The financial concerns argued by Denver Water do not outweigh the irreparable injury of environmental harm,” the judge wrote. “Denver Water took a calculated risk when it decided to move forward with construction despite the lawsuit.”

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CAMPO, Calif. (AP) — Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is a challenge, especially for adventurers making the entire run from Southern California to Canada, and Eric Kipperman’s job is to greet them at the start and lay bare the difficulties ahead.

He has lately begun warning that the journey may be even tougher. Following cuts by the Trump administration, plans to clear downed trees and rebuild storm-battered stretches in 2025 have been scrapped.

“This year, we’re going to have less trail work done on the trails, so just know that going into your hike, safety is the most important thing,” Kipperman told a group of backpackers from Europe and the United States at the trailhead near Campo, California, an hour’s drive east of San Diego.

He cautioned there is “no trail” at all in parts of the 2,650-mile path through California, Oregon and Washington state.

The cutbacks are not just on the West Coast. Ahead of the busy summer hiking season, funding freezes and mass layoffs also are disrupting repairs on the East Coast’s Appalachian Trail after nearly 500 miles were damaged by Hurricane Helene, underscoring how President Donald Trump’s dramatic downsizing of the U.S. government is touching even the nation’s remote backcountry where vacationers, wanderers and escapists alike retreat to leave modern life behind.

Wildfires and more intense storms due in part to climate change have been taking a toll on the legendary trails. The federal cuts threaten their very existence, according to the Pacific Crest Trail Association and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, which oversee their preservation in partnership with the government and receive millions in federal dollars.

The U.S. Forest Service called the situation “dynamic and evolving” in an email to The Associated Press, but said they are committed to ensuring public safety and access to recreation areas that are vital to local economies.

The Trump administration has let go some 3,400 workers at the U.S. Forest Service, and nearly 1,500 at the National Park Service, including trail repair specialists. The associations said the cuts also led to the rescinding of job offers for seasonal crews with technical skills to rebuild boardwalks, bridges and campsites and train thousands of volunteers.

Courts have ordered federal agencies to rehire thousands of workers, but some say they are not coming back.

“For hikers, they’re going to be crawling, navigating, working their way through downed trees across the trail that won’t get cut out,” said Justin Kooyman, director of the Pacific Crest Trail operations. “It’s going to make for a little more rough and tumble.”

A backlog of projects

While the trails are not in total disarray and many hikers may not see any damaged areas, maintenance is critical to their existence, the associations say. More than 20 miles (32 kilometers) of the Appalachian Trail remain closed following Helene and downed trees could fuel wildfires.

Last month, the Appalachian Trail turned 100 years old. The footpath stretches 2,193 miles between Georgia’s Springer Mountain and Maine’s Mount Katahdin.

Its founder, the late forest scientist Benton MacKaye, saw a need for a place to escape stress following the end of World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic.

The Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail officially became the country’s first National Scenic Trails under the 1968 National Trails System Act. Completing them has come to symbolize the strength of the human spirit, inspiring books and movies. Only a fraction are thru-hikers, a term for those who walk the trails from end to end. Many don’t succeed and several people have died trying. Most users hike for a day or two to enjoy the breathtaking beauty.

“I am so concerned with what seems to be a general lack of appreciation for what these protected outdoor spaces can bring to not just our physical well-being but to our souls,” said Sandi Marra, head of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. “If we lose these things, we are really going to be lost as a species, and definitely as a country.”

The Pacific Crest Trail Association said it is operating with a third less federal grant money than anticipated. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy said at least $1.5 million is at risk from federal downsizing.

The National Park Service said its funding has continued for the Appalachian Trail as it works to “address challenges collaboratively and seek solutions” to support the footpath’s “enduring legacy.”

Both trails already had a backlog of projects. Wildfires have scorched nearly 250 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail in recent years.

The disruption exacerbates the deteriorating conditions and the spread of invasive plant species, which will ultimately increase costs, said Megan Wargo, head of the Pacific Crest Trail Association.

Cutting back

The Pacific Crest Trail crosses searing desert and traverses forests of giant sequoias, the world’s largest trees, before climbing by snow-covered peaks in the rugged Sierra Nevada. After snaking over 50 mountain passes, it ends in Washington’s remote Pasayten Wilderness at the Canadian border.

As the trail’s popularity grew through social media and the bestselling memoir “Wild” that inspired a Hollywood film, drawing less experienced backpackers, the association hired what they call “crest runners.”

Kipperman is one of two at the southern end. Their duties include greeting hikers at the Mexican border, checking their permits and providing safety tips before they set off. The crest runners normally work from March until August, covering the hottest, riskiest months for that section.

Last year, a crest runner also worked the northern end at the Canadian border. But this year they only will be at the southern end until mid-May unless more federal funds are unfrozen.

Kipperman, whose trail name is “Pure Stoke,” is infectiously cheery as he rattles off the dangers from rattlesnakes to dehydration and distributes bags for discarded toilet paper. He steers clear of discussing politics and instead talks about protecting water quality, burying human waste, packing out trash and building safe campfires.

“Remove the ego. Address the situation. See if going forward is really the right thing for you,” Kipperman said, warning hikers to beware that Mile 225 or so is washed out.

Plowing ahead

After hearing Kipperman’s spiel, backpacker Joshua Suran said he planned to try helping restore the trail where possible.

Marias Michel of Germany trudged over, concerned about the weight of his backpack draped with gear, water bottles and a pair of Crocs. After quitting his job, he said he needed to do the trail, calling it “a resetting, a big detox.”

He was aware of the federal cuts but said he couldn’t worry about that.

“I’m just going to be learning by doing because I don’t want to be too much up here,” Michel said, pointing to his head. “I want to test myself. No expectations. It’s an attempt until you make it.”

Just-turned fields filled the air with the rich scent of dirt, mixing with the tart smokiness from workers burning weeds in irrigation ditches, preparing for the return of water. Early crops of alfalfa and winter wheat peeked from the ground, hinting at the fields of green to come.

As a worker maneuvered a massive leveler in the fields behind their house, Alan and Peggy Frantz pondered the future of their Rocky Ford farm — and their larger agricultural community strung along the Lower Arkansas River east of Pueblo.

The collapse of it all doesn’t feel too far out, too improbable, Alan Frantz said. Maybe not in their lifetimes, the couple said, but they’ve made sure to send their kids to college in case it all goes away.

“At some point, the cities just have to stop growing,” Alan Frantz said. “If you want a Dust Bowl like the ’30s, go ahead and take all the water, dry this all up.”

Colorado Springs is one of the cities Frantz and many of his neighbors worry most about — and now they fear a proposed 6,500-home annexation to that city will increase pressure on its utilities to source more water from the Arkansas. The farmers use the river to irrigate more than 220,000 acres of farmland, the economic backbone of the region.

Already, Colorado Springs Utilities estimates it will need 34,000 more acre-feet of water — or 11 billion gallons — annually to meet population growth for when the city fully develops inside its current boundaries, estimated to occur around 2070. Every annexation of land into the state’s second-largest city adds to that future gap.

Without water, there is no farming. And without farming, Frantz said, there would be no towns along the Lower Arkansas as it stretches from Pueblo to the Kansas border.

“There’s a fear in the Lower Arkansas Valley that communities here will die off at the rate Colorado Springs grows,” said Jack Goble, the general manager of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District.

The Colorado Springs City Council is set to decide Tuesday whether to rescind its Jan. 28 approval of the Karman Line annexation after a successful petition drive forced officials to reconsider. Alternatively, the council could let the city’s voters decide in a special election whether the annexation should proceed.

The controversy around the Colorado Springs annexation is the most recent flashpoint illustrating one of the central tensions in the state: Colorado’s cities do not have enough water to meet projected growth and climate change is shrinking the finite amount of water available. Where should the cities go for more supply? Who will give up their water?

The decades-old battle plays out across the state as growing Front Range communities seek new water sources. Communities on the Western Slope fear more of their water will be routed east across the Continental Divide, especially as the region’s largest river shrinks. Farmers and ranchers in the San Luis Valley successfully fought off an attempt by a company to pipe water from the valley’s depleting aquifer to ever-growing Douglas County. Aurora’s $80-million purchase of Otero County water rights last year rankled water leaders in southeastern Colorado, prompting threats of litigation.

“We all live within finite or even diminishing resources, but the view from city leaders is, ‘If you’re not growing, you’re dying,’ ” said Mike Bartolo, a retired Colorado State University agriculture researcher who grew up in the valley and spent three decades at the Arkansas Valley Research Center in Rocky Ford. “And that’s just such an outrageous view to have. … It’s a cake baked with arrogance and ignorance and iced with a thick layer of greed.”

Historically, some Front Range cities have sourced additional water supplies by buying farmland and repurposing the water attached to the land for municipal use. When done at broad scale, the removal of farm water can desiccate a community’s entire economy — just as water purchases by Aurora and Colorado Springs in the 1970s transformed Crowley County’s farmland into acres of weeds and dust.

“A lot of agricultural communities, like the Lower Arkansas, they’re just feeling like they should be put on the Endangered Species Act,” said Robert Sakata, the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s water policy advisor, noting that the state has lost about a third of its irrigated farmland since 1997. “There’s a lot of doom and gloom.”

About 90% of all water used in Colorado goes to the state’s $47 billion agriculture industry, 7% toward municipal and business use, and 3% for large industrial projects, according to the Colorado Water Plan.

As the state’s population grows, water experts estimate that municipal and industrial water users will need at least 230,000 acre-feet more water annually by 2050 — though the gap could be as large as 740,000 acre-feet. An acre-foot is the amount of water it takes to cover an acre in a foot of water and is generally enough to provide for two families’ yearly needs.

Already, the agriculture industry does not have enough water to produce at its full potential. The water plan estimates that, on average, about 80% of annual agricultural water demand is met.

The state water plan calls on Coloradans to realize “the reality that water in Colorado is not available in quantities to meet all needs at all times. Meeting increased municipal water needs must be balanced with maintaining agricultural uses and maintaining streamflows for environment and recreation use.”

Even if Colorado Springs rescinds approval for Karman Line, people along the Lower Arkansas River fear another proposed annexation will pop up. The Colorado Springs council in August rejected a 3,200-acre, 9,500-home annexation by some of the same developers, but then it approved Karman Line.

“It’s kind of like a game of whack-a-mole,” Goble said.

More water needed amid growth

The Karman Line annexation would add 1,900 acres and about 6,500 homes east of the city, though the bulk of the development would not touch current city limits and would be concentrated nearly four miles from the city border. The development would need about 1,672 acre-feet of water a year, according to Colorado Springs Utilities.

The utility — which is governed by the City Council — has enough water to meet current needs and Karman Line’s potential needs, said Lisa Barbato, its chief systems planning and projects officer.

But any addition to the city increases the amount of water it will eventually need to meet future growth.

The council, not Colorado Springs Utilities, decides when and whether to expand the city’s footprint. Average annual water use in the city totals about 70,000 acre-feet — less than the 95,000 acre-feet of water the utility can reliably provide now. But the utility estimates it will need to provide 129,000 acre-feet of water to the growing city when it is fully developed inside city limits, not including any annexations.

Part of the plan to secure another 34,000 acre-feet of water to meet that future need is to add between 15,000 and 25,000 acre-feet of agricultural water from the Arkansas River basin to its supplies, according to Colorado Springs Utilities’ long-term water plan. The water could come from temporary leases or permanent water rights purchases, the plan states.

When asked if there is a point when it doesn’t make sense for the city to continue expanding, Barbato talked about how the city has been able to consume the same amount of water even as it grows by increasing efficiency and conservation.

“At this point, we’re confident that we’re going to be able to meet our customers’ water needs,” she said.

Just as it needs water, the growing city also needs housing, Karman Line developer Doug Quimby said. Much of the undeveloped land inside city limits — the 24,000-acre Banning Lewis Ranch on the city’s eastern edge — is owned by one developer and sets up a monopoly dynamic, he said.

But some Colorado Springs residents are skeptical that the Karman Line annexation is smart growth. After the council approved the annexation in January, more than 18,000 city residents signed a petition forcing officials to reconsider the decision. Residents’ worries included burdening the city’s emergency services, increased utility costs and the development’s water needs, said Ann Rush, one of the organizers of the petition campaign.

“I think a lot of people just want City Council to just take care of what’s already going on in the city instead of adding on,” she said.

If the council or voters were to nix the Karman Line annexation, the company behind it would still try to build in unincorporated El Paso County or create a new municipality, Quimby said. The biggest obstacle would be finding another source of water, he said, but other options exist.

“It’s certainly not just Karman Line. It’s the whole Front Range where these issues have to be addressed on a larger basis,” Quimby said. “Water is a real issue, I don’t want to downplay it. The best thing we could do is now that we’ve had 22 years of drought, if we could have 22 years of monsoons, that’d solve the problem for another 50 years — but that doesn’t seem likely.”

Cities for years have become more efficient with their water. Now, agriculture needs to do the same, he said, since it is the sector using by far the most water in the state.

“That change is going to come, it’s inevitable — it has to,” he said.

Is a win-win possible?

Colorado Springs Utilities leaders hope to expand its agricultural water supplies in a way that is a win-win for the city and the farming communities, said Kim Gortz, the water supplies resources manager.

The problem does not necessarily need to pit urban growth against agricultural needs, she said. Cities have learned to do more with less water; could they help agriculture do the same?

“How do we think differently with agriculture as well?” she said. “Does the future look different? It’s not always ‘versus’ — can they learn from us and can we learn from them?”

Colorado Springs Utilities has pursued several ways to share water between the city and Lower Arkansas River farmers without permanently drying up farmland. One project finalized in 2018 allows the utility access to agricultural water for five of every 10 years, while farmers get the water the other five years.

In 2022, the utility inked an agreement with Bent County that allows it to use up to 15,000 acre-feet of water annually but restricts the utility from permanently drying up more than 3,125 acres of irrigated farmland. In return, the utility will pay the county millions of dollars in addition to any payments the utility will pay those selling their water.

Utility officials hope to gain some of that water through a program that helps farmers install more efficient center-pivot sprinklers, which water a field in a circle. The utility will then use the water that would have been used to irrigate the corners of land parcels.

“We’re looking at it as a long, learning-by-doing process,” Gortz said. “We’re not saying that what we’re doing today is perfect. We’re going to learn from it and might do something a little bit different tomorrow.”

While residents of the Lower Arkansas Valley said they are subsidizing the city’s growth through their water, Barbato says Colorado Springs provides the farming communities with health care, higher education, and arts and culture.

Quimby, the developer, said he sympathized with the farmers’ and ranchers’ concerns. His grandpa raised cattle and his dad grew up on a ranch. But it’s unfair, in his view, for the farmers to point their fingers at Colorado Springs when they’re the ones selling the water.

“Colorado Springs can’t steal their water,” Quimby said. “They own it. They have to decide to sell it. So if they don’t sell it, we can’t buy it.”

A tricky spiral

But things aren’t so simple on the Lower Arkansas.

For many farmers, their land and the water attached to it are their savings and retirement accounts, said Goble, the conservancy district manager. They sell when times are hard, there are debts to pay or when they have nobody to take over the business. Big cities can also often pay many times over what another farming family could.

In Rocky Ford, even those who don’t sell face the repercussions of those who do.

Alisha Knapp — part of the the fifth generation of her family to work on Knapp Farms — must think carefully about the water she uses on the chiles, tomatoes and other produce she grows. The water quality in the Arkansas River has degraded over time, requiring many farms to treat their water before spraying it on human food. Declining water quality means farmers must pay more to treat their water; if they don’t treat it, their crops become less healthy and prolific.

“It’s scary, it’s really scary,” she said of the future of farming in the valley.

When Colorado Springs buys agricultural water from the Lower Arkansas Valley, it doesn’t wait for the water to travel to the farmland it was once attached to before taking it for city use. Instead, the city is able to take the water directly from Pueblo Reservoir — upstream of the valley’s agricultural fields.

That means less Pueblo Reservoir water, which is generally considered clean, mixes with effluent entering the river from Fountain Creek. The reservoir water is crucial to dilute the natural salinity of the river system and to offset the polluted water from the creek. On March 25, as Knapp prepared chile seedlings in her greenhouse, about two-thirds of the water in the river in Rocky Ford was Fountain Creek water and one-third water was from Pueblo Reservoir.

Fountain Creek runs south through Colorado Springs before joining the Arkansas in Pueblo, dumping sediment, oil, heavy metals, E. coli, pesticides, PFAS and other pollutants into the river. The pollution became so bad that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state sued the city in 2017 for violations of the Clean Water Act, eventually prompting a settlement.

The different waters are visible from space — satellite imagery from Google shows the brackish brown of Fountain Creek mixing with the deep blue-green of the Arkansas River, eventually making the entire river brown after the confluence.

“Even if farmers never want to sell, they’re still getting worse and worse water,” Goble said.

It’s a tricky calculus for the farmers that remain, said Alan Franz, the Rocky Ford farmer. If they wait too long and the water quality degrades too steeply, their land and water will lose its value.

“If we can’t grow crops, we’re going to have to figure out what to do with hundreds of acres of dirt,” he said.

Farmers leaving means fewer jobs, which means fewer people patronizing local businesses and restaurants. The tax base will shrink and public services like schools will suffer, said Franz, who also sits on the local school board. Fewer businesses and public services could then push even more farmers to leave.

Although Colorado Springs’ council voted in favor of the annexation, Frantz hoped the regular citizens of the growing city would side with him if they knew what was at stake farther south. They would need to understand the cost of growth — quickly.

“We don’t have time for a slow education,” he said.

Frantz and other farmers along the Lower Arkansas know exactly what happens when a farming community loses its water.

One county to the north — a dozen miles from Frantz’s fields — still bears the scars.

Sisyphus of the valley

Tractors lumbering between fields once slowed traffic on Crowley County roads, but these days it’s more likely that a county-owned front loader with a bucket full of tumbleweeds brings cars to a crawl.

On windy days, the dirt — untethered without plant roots — blasts across the county and stings any uncovered skin. The dirt piles high enough on roadsides that barbed wire fences become completely hidden under drifts of dust and tumbleweeds. Some days, the roads are so full of dust from the surrounding dried-up farms that workers from the Colorado Department of Transportation must plow and sweep dirt off the road.

For farmers in the Lower Arkansas Valley, Crowley County is a warning — or foreshadowing — of the impacts of exporting water to Front Range metropolises.

“Crowley County is a poster child,” Bartolo said. “That community is just one of the most impoverished and destitute in the entire state, and that’s just hard.”

Massive water buys by Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Aurora in the 1970s and 1980s slowly dried up much of the farm fields in the county. The number of irrigated acres in the county plummeted from 24,128 in 1982 to 1,994 in 2022, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Without proper revegetation, many of those former farm fields desiccated into swaths of weeds and barren dirt. While Otero County, just a few miles south, smells of sweet-turned-earth in the spring, Crowley County smells like nothing — there is very little farming left.

“You can still see the irrigation ditches,” said Susan Jordan, one of the few remaining farmers in the county, while driving between fields. “They’re just full of dirt instead of water.”

When the farms went, so did much of the business and social life in the county. White signs outside the town of Crowley advertise a deli, two beauty shops, a liquor store, and the Fiddle Bow Saloon and Restaurant.

But only a coffee shop and the post office remain.

“We can’t even keep a liquor store open now,” Susan Jordan said with a short laugh.

Just outside town, the industry that replaced farming looms: prisons. The state-owned Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility and the privately owned Crowley County Correctional Facility now provide more than 500 jobs.

More and more farmers left as water became less available following the big cities’ purchases. Work became more difficult for those who remained.

The dirt and tumbleweeds are Dave and Susan Jordan’s constant foe. As the number of farms in the county dwindled, the Jordans absorbed more and more responsibility for taking care of the system of canals and ditches that bring water to their fields on 5J Farms.

Every spring, the couple must clean dirt, weeds and debris out of 12 miles of ditches so that irrigation water can flow — tasks once shared among all the farmers who used the system. The weeds have gotten so bad that the Jordans now need a backhoe to clean out the ditches.

With less water coming down the system, more of the Jordans’ water is lost as it seeps into the ground. While they used to grow melons and other produce, they now mostly grow cattle feed. Lately, it’s usually only enough to feed their own herds.

Stubbornness has kept the couple going, Susan Jordan said, but now they’re trying to sell. Their kids aren’t interested in taking on the work and, in their own words, they’re “too damn old” to keep going themselves. They hope to sell to someone who will keep farming the land, but that hasn’t proved easy.

Crowley County never recovered from the municipalities’ water buys decades ago, Bartolo said.

“There’s no such thing as economic development,” he said. “It’s just a trade — one place loses.”

Negotiating a future

The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District would love to be able to buy water rights from farmers when they come up for sale, Goble said.

The district could then keep the water in agricultural use. But with an annual budget of about $2 million, the district can’t compete with larger purchasers like cities, he said.

Goble hopes to strike an agreement with Colorado Springs Utilities that would create guardrails for future water buys. He’d like a hard limit on the total amount of agricultural water they take out of the district, which covers Pueblo, Crowley, Otero, Bent and Prowers counties.

But the utility has been resistant to that idea, he said.

Goble also would like to discuss ways the utility could help create new economic opportunities for the region should it buy more water there. Could the utility, perhaps, help jump-start the installation of a solar farm?

“If we don’t have an agreement, we’ll expend our resources fighting against them,” Goble said, though the district would rather spend its time and money working with the utility to find long-term solutions.

Water managers in rural areas across the state have reached out to Goble since the Lower Arkansas Valley farmers started taking a stand against the Colorado Springs annexations, Goble said.

“The rural agriculture community is banding together,” Goble said. “It’s a David-versus-Goliath situation, but I expect you’re going to see more and more of that.”

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U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello in an order late Thursday blocked Denver Water from enlarging Gross Reservoir east of Nederland until major federal environmental permitting processes are redone.

The judge found that allowing the reservoir expansion to continue without redoing the permits would cause irreparable environmental damage that cannot be compensated for with monetary payments. That harm would outweigh any financial costs Denver Water would incur from halting construction, she wrote.

“Environmental injury is often the very definition of irreparable harm — often permanent or at least of long duration,” Arguello wrote. “All parties agree that there will be environmental harm resulting from completion of the Moffat Collection System Project, including the destruction of 500,000 trees, water diversion from several creeks, and impacts to wildlife by the sudden loss of land.”

Denver Water, which provides water to 1.5 million people in metro Denver, said in a lengthy statement Friday evening that it will appeal the ruling, seek an immediate stay of the order halting work, and “do everything in its power to see this project through to completion.”

“We view this decision as a radical remedy that should raise alarm bells with the public, not only because of its impacts to water security in an era of longer, deeper droughts, catastrophic wildfire and extreme weather, but because it serves as an egregious example of how difficult it has become to build critical infrastructure in the face of relentless litigation and a broken permitting process,” Denver Water said in its statement.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said in a statement that he found the order to stop work on the dam “deeply concerning.” The utility said the project is 60% complete.

“The completion of Denver Water’s Gross Reservoir Expansion Project means that Denver and its surrounding communities will have the necessary water security for years to come,” Johnston said. “…I am hopeful that Denver Water can get back to work and complete this critical project.”

Project fought by environmental groups

The order is a huge victory for environmental groups that for years have opposed the controversial project. A coalition of environmental groups first filed suit in 2018 to stop the expansion of the reservoir, which they say would harm the health of the Colorado River system — where the reservoir’s water is sourced.

“Denver Water rolled the dice with ratepayers’ money, which was a mistake,” Gary Wockner of Save the Colorado, the lawsuit’s lead plaintiff, said in a statement. “We remain open to negotiations to find a mutually agreeable path forward.”

Denver Water planned to raise the dam’s height by 131 feet. When completed, the expanded dam would triple the reservoir’s capacity from 42,000 acre-feet to 120,000 acre-feet — enough water to serve approximately 156,000 additional households.

The utility began the permitting process for the project in 2002 and started construction in 2022. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ordered Denver Water to finish the expansion by 2027.

Already, workers have partially deconstructed the existing dam, dumped fill material and poured concrete for the expansion. Denver Water temporarily halted construction for the winter season in November and recently resumed work, with concrete placement set to begin Thursday, spokesman Todd Hartman said.

The judge’s preliminary injunction orders Denver Water to halt construction on the dam until a future hearing at which engineers can explain how much additional construction is needed to make the partially built dam safe and structurally sound. She will then issue a permanent injunction dictating how much more construction will be allowed.

“Leaving the project incomplete creates ongoing safety and water supply issues, as Denver Water cannot fill the reservoir to capacity during construction and, as we have testified to the judge, the original gravity dam has been deconstructed and its foundation excavated, exposing steep rock slopes that depend on bolts to temporarily shore them up,” Denver Water said in its statement.

Violations of federal environmental law

Arguello in October found that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when approving permits for the construction of the dam. Arguello said the Corps failed to sufficiently consider other options that could be less environmentally damaging than dam expansion and, in her ruling Thursday, she said the Corps’ deficiencies were “extensive and serious.”

After the October ruling, Arguello asked defendants and plaintiffs to try to find a resolution outside of court, but they failed to do so.

The judge also criticized the Corps for failing to quantify how climate change will impact precipitation and, therefore, how that change could impact the need for more water storage. It’s unclear whether it’s practical and reasonable to build a reservoir to store Colorado River water that may not exist or be available, she previously said.

Denver Water argued that delaying or halting construction would be expensive and dangerous, but Arguello was not persuaded. She also criticized Denver Water for starting construction on the dam while the project’s legality was being challenged. The water provider cannot then argue the project should continue simply because it is already underway, she said.

“The Court does not find Respondents’ and Intervenor’s arguments about alleged cost, delay and the alleged urgent need to address droughts persuasive because these alleged hardships are largely self-inflicted,” she wrote.

Denver Water has said the expanded reservoir would anchor Denver Water’s northern supply system and help protect the utility’s ability to deliver water if its much larger southern supply system is impacted by fire, mudslides or drought.

“Denver Water has an enormous sense of urgency surrounding the project, considering increasingly variable weather and water supply patterns, how close we have come to falling short of water on the north side of our system in years past, our harrowing experiences with the threats and impacts of wildfire in our collection area and the need for system flexibility to ensure we can provide a critical public resource under crisis conditions,” the utility said in its statement Friday.

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The announcement about opening federal land to private data center companies coincided Thursday with Energy Secretary Chris Wright‘s visit to NREL, where he toured research labs, gave a 10-minute talk to employees and discussed plans for the agency, including the push to provide more data storage capacity for advancing technology.

The Energy Department has identified an 11-acre site located west of the Flatirons main campus, near the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, that “would be an ideal location for a data center facility,” according to a “Request for Information on Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure on DOE Lands” posted online Thursday.

The list of locations identified as potential hosts for data centers included storied nuclear research facilities in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as well as sites in Idaho, Missouri, Washington and Illinois.

“So we’re saying we have a bunch of land. Tell us where you would like to build on these lands. Let’s make a deal. Build a data center. Build the energy that supplies that grid. Maybe share some expertise and intelligence. Maybe share some of your computing power there with our national labs,” Wright said during a news conference. “I think there’s a lot of room for things to be done here with just a more creative, common-sense framework that we’re trying to bring to this government.”

The NREL campus has enough land, power, water and broadband capability to host a 100-megawatt data center, and construction could begin as early as this year, the request-for-information document said.

“Through this project, NREL could help the U.S. establish global AI dominance and accelerate the transformation of the U.S. data center industry by dramatically reducing construction timelines, enabling the U.S. to rapidly deploy critical AI infrastructure at scale,” the document said. “NREL aims to establish a site where a developer can continue its usual business operations while using the site as a proving ground. The approach would not only allow the developer to focus on its business objectives but also provide national stakeholders with valuable insights into accelerating AI data center construction and power deployment, paving the way for future industry innovations.”

In a 20-minute news conference, Wright said the intention is to invite private companies onto federal land to do business in a public-private partnership. That could mean the federal government leases the land to a company or the data center developer reserves some of its capacity for NREL’s work, because the federal lab also relies on data centers.

“It would be a commercial arrangement using our land to get some value out of it with a private company,” Wright said.

NREL’s Flatirons Campus is a 305-acre site where more than 1,000 people research and invent ways to improve and strengthen the energy grid. It has enough space to add several hundred thousand square feet of additional buildings.

The Trump administration’s move follows an executive order signed in January by outgoing President Joe Biden that sought to remove hurdles for AI data center expansion in the U.S. while also encouraging those data centers, which require large amounts of electricity, to be powered with renewable energy.

While President Donald Trump has since sought to erase most of Biden’s signature AI policies, he made clear after returning to the White House that he had no interest in rescinding Biden’s data center order.

“I’d like to see federal lands opened up for data centers,” Trump said in January. “I think they’re going to be very important.”

While the tech industry has long relied on data centers to run online services, from email and social media to financial transactions, new AI technology behind popular chatbots and generative tools requires even more powerful computation to build and operate.

A report released by the Department of Energy late last year estimated that the electricity needed for data centers in the U.S. tripled over the past decade and is projected to double or triple again by 2028, when it could consume up to 12% of the nation’s electricity.

The United States, under both presidents, has been speeding up efforts to license and build a new generation of nuclear reactors to supply carbon-free electricity.

While Biden’s executive order focused on powering AI infrastructure with clean energy sources such as “geothermal, solar, wind and nuclear,” Thursday’s statement from Trump’s energy department focused only on nuclear. But in a lengthy request for information sought from data center and energy developers, the agency outlines a variety of electricity sources available at each site, from solar arrays to gas turbines.

Colorado already is asking how it will be able to provide enough electricity for the surging demand for data centers as it phases out coal-burning power plants.

Data centers come with controversy, especially in the American West, where water is a valuable but vanishing resource. Data centers use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to cool their facilities. They also require an enormous amount of electricity, which often requires the burning of more fossil fuels, creating more greenhouse gas emissions that accelerate climate change.

A 100-megawatt data center would use enough electricity to power about 20,000 homes.

When asked from where NREL would draw enough water and electricity to support a 100-megawatt data center, Wright said the Energy Department would ask private developers to also build the electrical capacity to run their systems. A map included with the request for information shows nearby Xcel Energy substations as well as additional space for windmills, solar and battery storage.

“You’re going to co-locate power,” Wright said. “You’re going to build a data center, and you’re going to build the power and resources to power it.”

He did not answer where the necessary water would come from.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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