Three Drop Thursday
A Colorado River Free Zone
Friends of Confluence West -
Welcome to Three Drop Thursday, a snapshot of what we’ve been paying attention to this week.
We've declared a "Colorado River Free Zone” for this Three Drop Thursday. For the past few weeks, many of us have been up to our eyeballs in everything Colorado River Basin - assessing, responding, and/or groaning over the various proposals to keep (we hope) the river from crashing. Time to take a break.
For the West,
Kimery
Yep, hundreds of millions
As we've been reporting in this space for about a year now, the US Forest Service has a lot of new funding. The 2021 Federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides $3.5 billion over the next five years for the National Forest Service's Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving the Resilience of America's Forests – aka the '10-Year Strategy.' Late last month, the Forest Service announced its second round of funding for "priority firesheds" - $490M for 11 projects. Careful readers of Three Drop Thursday will remember the problem and the opportunity this funding brings – totally great that the Forest Service is getting all of this funding, totally maddening that western source water protection, climate resilience, and habitat are not priorities.
OK, what's everyone doing about those maddening challenges?
As one example, many Healthy Headwaters Alliance members are working with their Regions advocating for NEPA-ready projects in these priority landscapes to include source water protection, et al. Later this month (drum roll please), Confluence West will be rolling out our Watersheds-for-Firesheds project, supporting community advocates with timely information and analysis to help them make their way through the Forest Service’s "10-year Strategy" maze. Sneak preview of the unfinished site. We'll blast out the final in the next few weeks.
OK, We Lied.
We just couldn't resist (and who could) a sheep explaining the current Colorado River situation. A bit of levity for what has been a grim couple of weeks. Enjoy!
Please support Confluence West (aka Carpe Diem West!) Since our founding in 2007, we've been pushing the edge of the western water and climate change edge - building successful alliances and campaigns and bringing new science and opportunities to put innovative, sustainable regional projects into motion in the American West. You can read about our current projects and the ones we're developing. Thanks for your support!
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