New Mexico gov. signs bill overriding local abortion bans - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
New Mexico's governor signed an abortion-rights bill Thursday that overrides local ordinances aimed at limiting access to abortion procedures and medications.
Reproductive health clinics in New Mexico offer abortion procedures to patients from states, including Texas, with strict abortion bans. The new law also aims to ensure access to gender affirming healthcare related to distress over gender identity that doesn't match a person's assigned sex.
New Mexico has one of the country's most liberal abortion access laws, but two counties and three cities in eastern New Mexico have recently adopted abortion restrictions that reflect deep-seated opposition to offering the procedure.
The bill signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham overrides those local ordinances.
An additional bill working its way through New Mexico's Legislature would protect abortion providers and patients from out-of-state interference, prosecution or extradition attempts.
In 2021, New Mexico's Democrat-led Legislature passed a measure to repeal a dormant 1969 statute that outlawed most abortion procedures, which ensured access to abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
Anti-abortion ordinances — adopted over the past several months by officials in the cities of Hobbs, Clovis and Eunice, along with Lea and Roosevelt counties — reference an obscure U.S. anti-obscenity law that prohibits shipping of medication or other materials intended to aid abortions.
Separately, Democratic state Attorney General Raúl Torrez has urged the state Supreme Court to intervene against local abortion ordinances that he says violate state constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.
Democratic governors in 20 states this year launched a network intended to strengthen abortion access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision nixing a woman's constitutional right to end a pregnancy. The decision shifted regulatory powers over the procedure to state governments.
Many states have also enacted or contemplated limits or outright bans on transgender medical treatment, with conservative U.S. lawmakers saying they are worried about young people later regretting irreversible body-altering treatment.
Few disaster relief measures are scattered throughout historic budget funding bills - By Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
While New Mexicans recovering from last year’s disasters try to keep up their livelihoods, afford food for dinner or get running water, it’s up to the governor now to determine how much recovery funds should be sent to victims and struggling communities.
Lawmakers approved two budget bills on Wednesday, sending both over to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Senators passed the capital outlay project funds bill by a vote of 27-13, and representatives concurred with changes made to the General Appropriations Act of 2023.
Once signed, the state will be working with a record-breaking $9.57 billion budget.
Tucked into both pieces of budget legislation are measures to help communities hit by disasters in 2022.
Southern New Mexico experienced the second-largest wildfire in state history and disastrous flooding afterward. It tore apart communities in and around the Gila National Forest, areas that are still attempting to recover. Grant and Sierra counties have been slogging through a long process to get state financial assistance for months.
Sens. Crystal Diamond (R-Elephant Butte) and Siah Correa Hemphill (D-Silver City) represent the affected communities, and introduced legislation last month that would send $3 million to those disaster victims.
The 2023 budget passed by lawmakers knocked that down to $2 million.
Diamond pointed out at a Senate Finance meeting on Saturday that the budget would also set aside $1 million for a telescope at the University of New Mexico. She questioned why that’s going through when nobody even introduced legislation for that, and her disaster funds are being cut by $1 million.
“So there wasn’t a bill request to put the million dollar telescope in, but there was a bill that was passing through it for the Black Fire, and that was reduced from $3 million to $2 million,” she said.
During Wednesday’s Senate floor debate, Diamond said there are also priority issues in the capital outlay project bill. She said Truth or Consequences has a water infrastructure crisis ongoing in the city, and a $20 million request to alleviate the situation isn’t going through.
The only funding in House Bill 505 specified for Truth or Consequences would go toward an animal shelter and senior center. There’s no funding set aside for the water issues Diamond mentioned.
“We have certainly ignored critical water infrastructure needs in some of more remote counties,” Diamond said.
A few hundred miles east of Diamond’s district, other counties are also trying to come back from disaster. The McBride Fire hit Ruidoso in Lincoln County last year, too, and lawmakers wanted to get over $18 million in recovery funds to their struggling counties.
The general appropriations bill took that down to $5 million.
The county would also get $1.8 million to repair flood-damaged roads, bridges and infrastructure, including sewer systems, under the capital outlay bill.
That capital outlay legislation doesn’t set aside anything similar for Black Fire-affected counties, although there would be around $15 million for flood mitigation and control in other parts of the state.
Northern counties recovering from the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire, the largest wildfire ever recorded in the state, already have state dollars set aside for them. The governor signed legislation into law back in February, allocating $100 million for local governments and counties to repair damage. That money is a loan the state expects to be repaid by billions in federal relief aid.
That legislation was unique because it didn’t directly tie into the budget bills, like a majority of other measures do. It was one of the first bills Lujan Grisham signed this year.
There are still some holes.
That money can only go to political subdivisions, which leaves some unanswered questions on how acequias can afford to fully recover.
Without those systems to irrigate crops, farmers and ranchers in southern and northern New Mexico are largely left without a source of income.
There could be some relief in the capital outlay bill for those disaster-wrecked systems.
The capital outlay legislation lays out general funds for acequia and irrigation associations across the state, including those that are still trying to recover from last year’s massive fires and floods.
Funding ranges from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars for specific acequia associations. One water project in Las Vegas has over $1 million allocated.
There’s also just over $5 million set aside for acequias statewide.
In that bill, there is only specific disaster recovery repair language for one acequia association in the budget — Madre de Holman in Mora County. The language in the bill specifies that work can be done “to plan, design and construct improvements to the acequia Madre de Holman, including disaster recovery repair.”
Other acequias aren’t singled out with that explicit language, but dollars allocated could potentially also go toward similar disaster work.
When lawmakers have discussed the budget bills over the past week in committee and on the House and Senate floors, there have been very few discussions about how the state dollars will help disaster-affected communities.
Drought over? Spring outlook finds relief — and flood risk - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Record snowfall and rain have helped to loosen drought's grip on parts of the western U.S. as national forecasters and climate experts warned Thursday that some areas should expect more flooding as the snow begins to melt.
The winter precipitation wiped out exceptional and extreme drought in California for the first time since 2020, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday in a seasonal, nationwide outlook that came as parts of the state are under water. In neighboring Nevada, flood warnings were in effect and rushing water prompted some evacuations overnight in one of Arizona's tourist towns.
Elsewhere, NOAA's forecast warned of elevated flood risks from heavy snowpack this spring in the upper Midwest along the Mississippi River from Minnesota south to Missouri.
Despite the receding drought, experts cautioned that the relief may be only a blip as the long-term effects persist from what has been a stubborn dry streak.
Groundwater and reservoir storage levels — which take much longer to bounce back — remain at historic lows. It could be more than a year before the extra moisture has an effect on the shoreline at Lake Mead that straddles Arizona and Nevada. And it's unlikely that water managers will have enough wiggle room to wind back the clock on proposals for limiting water use.
That's because water release and retention operations for the massive reservoir and its upstream sibling — Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border — already are set for the year. The reservoirs are used to manage Colorado River water deliveries to 40 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico.
Lake Powell could gain 35 feet as snow melts and makes its way into tributaries and rivers over the next three months. How much it rises will depend on soil moisture levels, future precipitation, temperatures and evaporation losses.
Paul Miller, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service's Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, said that sounds like a lot of water for one of the nation's largest reservoirs, but it still will be only one-third full.
"It's definitely moving in the right direction, but we're far from filling the reservoirs in the Colorado River system and we're far from being at a comfortable point from a water supply perspective," Miller said during Thursday's NOAA briefing.
Federal forecasters outlined other predictions for temperature, precipitation and drought over the next three months, saying the spring wet season is expected to improve drought conditions across parts of the northern and central Plains and Florida could see dryness disappear there by the end of June.
Overall, the West has been more dry than wet for more than 20 years, and many areas will still feel the consequences. The northern Rockies and parts of Washington state will likely see drought expand over the spring, while areas of extreme to exceptional drought are likely to persist across parts of the southern High Plains.
An emergency declaration in Oregon warns of higher risks for water shortages and wildfires in the central part of the state, and pockets of central Utah, southeastern Colorado and eastern New Mexico are still dealing with extreme drought.
Ranchers in the arid state already are planning for another dry year, and some residents are still reeling from a historic wildfire season.
Jon Gottschalck, chief of the operational prediction branch at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, said the start of the fire season in the Southwestern U.S. likely will be delayed.
"But it doesn't mean that it couldn't end up being a very strong season," he said. "It's just likely to be a more muted beginning for sure."
Gottschalck said warmer than average temperatures are forecasted for New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas to the Gulf Coast and up the eastern seaboard, as well as in Hawaii and northern Alaska. Lower than normal temperatures are probable, he said, for North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota and the Great Basin region.
The real standout this winter has been the Great Basin, which stretches from the Sierra Nevada to the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. It has recorded more snow this season than the last two seasons combined. That's notable given that over the last decade, only two years — 2017 and 2019 — had snowpack above the median.
"We've pretty much blown past all kinds of averages and normals in the Lower Colorado Basin," Miller said, not unlike other western basins.
Tony Caligiuri, president of the preservation group Colorado Open Lands, said all the recent precipitation shouldn't derail work to recharge groundwater supplies.
"The problem or the danger in these episodic wet year events is that it can reduce the feeling of urgency to address the longer-term issues of water usage and water conservation," he said.
The group is experimenting in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, the headwaters of the Rio Grande. One of North America's longest rivers, the Rio Grande and its reservoirs have been struggling due to meager snowpack, long-term drought and constant demands. It went dry over the summer in Albuquerque, and managers had no extra water to supplement flows.
Colorado Open Lands reached an agreement with a farmer to retire his land and stop irrigating roughly 1,000 acres. Caligiuri said the idea is to take a major straw out of the aquifer, which will enable the savings to sustain other farms in the district so they no longer face the threat of having to turn off their wells.
"We've seen where we can have multiple good years in place like the San Luis Valley when it comes to rainfall or snowpack and then one drought year can erase a decade of progress," he said. "So you just can't stick your head in the sand just because you're having one good wet year."
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Associated Press writers Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, and Drew Costley in Washington contributed to this report.
Record $9.6B spending plan heads to New Mexico governor - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
New Mexico's Democratic-led Legislature sent an annual spending plan Wednesday to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for consideration that would increase annual general fund spending by 14% to underwrite tuition-free college, bolster rural rural health care networks and expand no-pay day care and prekindergarten.
The House concurred with recent Senate amendments to the record-setting $9.6 billion budget by a voice vote. The bill would increase general fund spending by nearly $1.2 billion for the fiscal year running from July 2023 through June 2024.
It passed despite objections from several House Republicans, who worried that the spending spree won't be sustainable in future years. Democratic Sen. Shannon Pinto of Tohatchi also voted no.
Separately, the Senate cast a final legislative vote to send a $2.2 billion list of construction projects to the governor for possible approval. Republicans in the Senate minority voted against that bill as they protested a $10 million provision from the governor to underwrite construction of a reproductive health care clinic in Las Cruces that would provide abortions.
Lujan Grisham can sign the bills without changes or use her line-item veto authority to reject any and all provisions. Those veto decisions typically are made over the course of weeks.
Democratic state Rep. Nathan Small of Las Cruces, the lead House budget negotiator, said he was comfortable with the proposed spending increase amid robust local oil production, and a $600 million deposit into a state permanent fund that expands opportunities for investment earnings to spend on future infrastructure projects.
"We are investing in education, we're investing in infrastructure," Small said. "And we are saving more money than ever before."
Republican state Rep. James Townsend of Artesia urged caution.
"This increased spending at these rates is very troubling to me, I don't think we can sustain it," he said.
The budget proposal fulfills major initiatives sought by Lujan Grisham at the outset of a second term amid indications of faltering progress in public education in a state with high rates of childhood poverty.
General-fund spending on early childhood education, including home-visit counseling to parents of newborns, would increase by nearly $135 million – a nearly 70% boost.
Taxpayers will spend $145 million to fund tuition-free college for in-state students for the coming fiscal year amid rising student enrollment – and rising tuition rates that are set by governor-appointed regents. For the first time, tuition-free college would become a standard part of the annual budget process and state spending obligations in future years.
Public-sector employees in state government and education would receive a 6% average salary increase, after the consumer price index of inflation increased by roughly 6.5% in 2022.
The budget proposal includes the first salary increases since 2001 for statewide elected officials including the secretary of state, attorney general, state treasurer and state land commissioner who oversees natural resources leases on state trust land to help fund education. Those salaries would increase by as much as 70%, including a pay bump from $85,000 a year to about $145,000 for the secretary of state. The governor's salary won't change from $110,000.
Annual state general fund spending on Medicaid health care would increase by $246 million, or 21%. Much of the increase is devoted to increasing payment rates to physicians and other health care providers amid evidence of an aging and inadequate medical workforce.
Medicaid reimbursement rates are crucial benchmark for funding health care in New Mexico. More than 980,000 people -- or nearly 47% of the state population -- are enrolled in Medicaid health care for people living in poverty or on the cusp.
Separately, a bill aimed at lowering medical malpractice liability at independent health care facilities to ensure affordable insurance advanced on a 40-2 vote of the state Senate. Legislators say a state patient compensation fund will help ensure financial protection for medical patients who are harmed.
The state Senate was scheduled Wednesday to debate and possibly vote on a revised suite of proposed tax credits, cuts and rebates.
New Mexico poised to strengthen state Human Rights Act - By Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
While state legislatures around the United States are considering or passing laws that exclude transgender people from citizenship and public life, the New Mexico Senate on Tuesday night voted to expand the New Mexico Human Rights Act specifically to prohibit discrimination against trans people.
Since 1969, New Mexico’s Human Rights Act has prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. However, House Bill 207 would expand the statute “so that there are no loopholes in the law,” co-sponsor Sen. Peter Wirth (D-Santa Fe) said.
Following in the footsteps of North Carolina’s infamous 2016 “bathroom bill,” which effectively legalized anti-LGBTQ discrimination, state lawmakers across the country have advanced more than 400 pieces of legislation in 2023 alone which attack trans youth and adults’ access to public education, health care, restrooms, and legal recognition of their gender.
Sen. Carrie Hamblen (D-Las Cruces), who carried the New Mexico bill in the state Senate, said the legislation will honor differences between New Mexicans, protect residents, and make sure public funds do not support discrimination.
Senators passed the bill Tuesday night in a party-line 26-10 vote. Six senators were absent from the debate.
“I am glad we have taken a protective stance for trans and queer kids in New Mexico, when so many across the country are increasingly fearing for their lives,” Hamblen said, her voice breaking.
The bill, if signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, would prohibit public entities and public contractors from discriminating on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, pregnancy, serious medical condition or spousal affiliation.
The legislation does not determine whether a government or individual entity is discriminating, Hamblen said. Instead, those findings are made by the state Human Rights Commission.
Lawmakers cannot create protections for all young people to end depression, anxiety, stigma, or suicidal intentions, said Sen. Leo Jaramillo (D-Española). They can however ensure that people charged with educating and protecting young people do so for LGBTQ+ youth across the state, he said.
“Let’s set a proper example across the nation and exemplify how many lives can be saved due to this critical piece of legislation,” Jaramillo said.
The Senate on Tuesday also passed related measures requiring menstrual products be made available in public school bathrooms; and prohibiting insurance companies from denying patients access to prosthetics or orthotics or changing someone’s insurance premiums because of a disability.
Sen. William Sharer (R-Farmington) tried to amend House Bill 207 to exempt religious organizations from the nondiscrimination law, but the Senate rejected his amendment.
“If any religious entity is receiving our taxpayer dollars, then those monies cannot be used to discriminate,” Hamblen said.
Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino (D-Albuquerque) said the amendment would allow religious organizations to discriminate and use public funds to do so.
“That’s what we simply cannot allow,” Ortiz y Pino said. “There have been religions that supported segregation, apartheid, there have been religions that supported slavery. But they should never have been given government money to do those things.”
Feds spend $2.4 million on cloud seeding for Colorado River - Brittany Peterson Associated Press
The Southern Nevada Water Authority on Thursday voted to accept a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to fund cloud seeding in other Western states whose rivers feed the parched desert region.
The weather modification method uses planes and ground-based cannons to shoot silver iodide crystals into clouds, attracting moisture to the particles that falls as additional snow and rain.
The funding comes as key reservoirs on the Colorado River hit record lows and booming Western cities and industries fail to adjust their water use to increasingly shrinking supplies.
"This money from Reclamation is wonderful, we just have to decide how exactly it's going to benefit us," said Andrew Rickert, who coordinates Colorado's cloud seeding for the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
The federal funding will go toward upgrading manual generators to ones that can be remotely operated, and using planes to seed clouds in key parts of the Upper Colorado River Basin, according to Southern Nevada Water Authority documents for its board meeting.
Securing enough generators could be a challenge, Rickert said. "There's not a lot of makers of cloud seeding generators," he said. "Not only do we have to make sure we can find that, but that they could make as many as we need."
The Bureau of Reclamation declined to comment about the funding decision.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority said the grant, while administered by Nevada, is not exclusively for the state's benefit. "It will all be used to do cloud seeding in the Upper Basin for the benefit of all the river's users," wrote public outreach officer Corey Enus over email.
In the Upper Colorado River Basin, Utah and Colorado have been seeding clouds for decades. Wyoming has nearly a decade of experience, and New Mexico recently began approving permits for warm weather seeding in the eastern part of the state.
Colorado, Utah and Wyoming each spend between about $1 million and $1.5 million a year for cloud seeding. Utah's legislature recently expanded their investment in cloud seeding programs in next year's state budget, allocating more than $14 million.
Numerous studies indicate cloud seeding can add 5% to 15% more precipitation from storm clouds.
Since 2007, various groups have contributed to the overall cloud seeding budgets in those states. In 2018, several entities, including the Southern Nevada Water Authority, committed to long-term funding for those efforts, collectively contributing about $1.5 million annually.
The grant from the reclamation bureau will be spread out over two years, temporarily doubling financial support for the Upper Basin cloud seeding from outside parties.
The seven Colorado River basin states are still negotiating with the Bureau of Reclamation on how they will conserve 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water — or up to roughly one-third. The Bureau is expected to release a draft proposal this month and expects to finalize plans by mid-August, when it typically announces the amount of water available from the Colorado River for the following year.
With such an over-allocated river, everyone will have to use less, particularly the agricultural sector, said Kathryn Sorenson of the Kyl Center for Water Policy think tank.
"I think a lot the allure of this type of program is it's easier to talk about how do we get more than to talk about who has to use less," she said.
Legislation to give low-income New Mexicans cheaper utility rates passes Senate - By Megan Gleason,Source New Mexico
People with low incomes could have cheaper utility bills if legislation that senators approved on Tuesday can make it through the Roundhouse in four days.
After discussions on Monday and Tuesday, the Senate passed the Low-Income Solar Act, Senate Bill 432, by a vote of 25-11. All the votes against the legislation were from Republican lawmakers, though Sen. Gay Kernan (R-Hobbs) voted for its passage.
The bill has to pass the House by Saturday at noon, which is when this year’s legislative session ends. If representatives approve any changes to the legislation, it has to go back to the Senate again for concurrence.
Senate Bill 432 proposes that investor-owned utilities, like PNM, give bill credits to rental residents of low-income multi-unit housing — like apartments, townhouses or duplexes — that primarily use renewable energy for electricity generation.
These could be units that help low-income New Mexicans, unhoused Native Americans or victims of violence, like domestic abuse or sexual assault, according to language in the bill.
Federal tax credits will be the incentive to get property owners on board. Based on the proposal, that could include a private landowner, or property operated by tribal, state or federal entities.
The Inflation Reduction Act allows up to 30% off of solar installation costs in the form of tax credits and another 20% if the project is for a low-income residential building. So whoever owns the property and pays for or installs a solar system would get the federal tax credits, and their residents would get utility bill credits.
“Should this bill pass, that gives us access to that money so that those folks who are in affordable housing — designated affordable housing — can have the opportunity to reduce their utility costs,” bill sponsor Sen. Carrie Hamblen (D-Las Cruces) said.
The Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department said this legislation makes renewable energy more accessible throughout the state and described this as “community solar on a smaller scale.”
“For many years putting solar on our homes was for those who could afford it,” Hamblen said.
The savings would be dependent on the property owner choosing to install solar systems on low-incoming housing units. Sen. David Gallegos (R-Eunice), who voted against the bill’s passage, asked a question that pointed this out, and Hamblen said he’s right.
“Although we still have a way to go, we are starting that process by using federal monies to reduce the costs of a solar system in half so that those who need help reducing their utility cost have that opportunity,” Hamblen said.
The amount of bill credits tenants get have to be equal between all people living in the space, since the legislation specifies that this can only apply for housing with multiple people, like apartments. Sen. George Muñoz (D-Gallup) questioned how equitable that really is.
He brought up a hypothetical scenario where one tenant’s average utility bill is $1,000, another’s is $2,000 and someone else’s is $5,000. He asked if those people all still have the same utility savings.
Hamblen said yes.
She said the federal rules are strict on this front, but there will still be savings through any federal money that arrives.
“I understand the question about if somebody is using a little bit more electricity than another person. However, that is beyond our control because of those federal monies and the guidelines in those federal monies,” Hamblen said. “However, they all still do get a reduction in their utility costs.”
Muñoz recused himself from the vote following this answer.
Electric cooperatives, like rural city-owned utilities, wouldn’t have to adhere to this legislation. Most New Mexicans get their energy from investor-owned utilities, like the Public Service Company of New Mexico.
A metering system would determine how much the electricity bill credits are for tenants. Unused credits could be carried forward, according to the legislation.
Utility companies would have to install metering systems, and the bill specifies that companies like PNM can’t charge people for “reasonable costs” for installations or upgrades, or charge them any other fees for participating in this credit program that other customers don’t have to pay.
It would be up to the state’s Public Regulation Commission to enforce all these credit rules, which would have to go into effect by Jan. 1, 2024 if the legislation passes. However, in the bill’s fiscal impact report, the PRC said that the agency would need at least a year to prepare to enforce the rules.
Republican senators repeatedly asked how this bill would benefit the building owner. The PRC also questioned that in the report. Hamblen said in addition to solar system costs being cut in half, the longevity of utility rates would be lower.
She said this needs to happen while the state can use these federal tax credits. The credits go through until 2034, though the amount starts to decline after 2032.
“This is not something that is long term,” Hamblen said. “This is something that we really want to take advantage of now.”
Scientists: Largest US reservoirs moving in right direction - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Parts of California are under water, the Rocky Mountains are bracing for more snow, flood warnings are in place in Nevada, and water is being released from some Arizona reservoirs to make room for an expected bountiful spring runoff.
All the moisture has helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of the western U.S. Even major reservoirs on the Colorado River are trending in the right direction.
But climate experts caution that the favorable drought maps represent only a blip on the radar as the long-term effects of a stubborn drought persist.
Groundwater and reservoir storage levels — which take much longer to bounce back — remain at historic lows. It could be more than a year before the extra moisture has an effect on the shoreline at Lake Mead that straddles Arizona and Nevada. And it's unlikely that water managers will have enough wiggle room to wind back the clock on proposals for limiting water use.
That's because water release and retention operations for the massive reservoir and its upstream sibling — Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border — already are set for the year. The reservoirs are used to manage Colorado River water deliveries to 40 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico.
Still, Lake Powell could gain 45 feet (14 meters) as snow melts and makes its way into tributaries and rivers over the next three months. How much it rises will depend on soil moisture levels, future precipitation, temperatures and evaporation losses.
"We're definitely going in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go," said Paul Miller, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service's Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.
Federal forecasters are scheduled Thursday to roll out predictions for temperature, precipitation and drought over the next three months, as well as the risk for springtime flooding.
California already has been drenched by a fire hose of moisture from the Pacific Ocean that has led to flooding, landslides and toppled trees.
Ski resorts on the California-Nevada border are marking their snowiest winter stretch since 1971, when record-keeping began. In fact, the Sierra Nevada is on the verge of surpassing the second-highest snow total for an entire winter season, with at least two months still to go.
In Arizona, forecasters warned that heavy rain was expected to fall on primed snowpack in the mountains above the desert enclave of Sedona. One of the main creeks running through the tourist town was expected to reach the flood stage and evacuations were ordered for some neighborhoods late Wednesday.
"We've pretty much blown past all kinds of averages and normals in the Lower Colorado Basin," Miller said, not unlike other western basins.
Forecasters say the real standout has been the Great Basin, which stretches from the Sierra Nevada to the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. It has recorded more snow this season than the last two seasons combined. Joel Lisonbee, with the National Integrated Drought Information System, said that's notable given that over the last decade, only two years — 2017 and 2019 — had snowpack above the median.
Overall, the West has been more dry than wet for more than 20 years, and many areas will still feel the consequences.
An emergency declaration in Oregon warns of higher risks for water shortages and wildfires in the central part of the state. Pockets of central Utah, southeastern Colorado and eastern New Mexico are still dealing with extreme drought, while parts of Texas and the Midwest have become drier.
Forecasters are expecting warm, dry weather to kick in over the coming weeks, meaning drought will keep its foothold in some areas and tighten its grip elsewhere.
Tony Caligiuri, president of the preservation group Colorado Open Lands, said all the recent precipitation shouldn't derail work to recharge groundwater supplies.
"The problem or the danger in these episodic wet year events is that it can reduce the feeling of urgency to address the longer-term issues of water usage and water conservation," he said.
The group is experimenting in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, the headwaters of the Rio Grande. One of North America's longest rivers, the Rio Grande and its reservoirs have been struggling due to meager snowpack, long-term drought and constant demands. It went dry over the summer in Albuquerque, and managers had no extra water to supplement flows.
Colorado Open Lands reached an agreement with a farmer to retire his land and stop irrigating the about 1,000 acres. Caligiuri said the idea is to take a major straw out of the aquifer, which will enable the savings to sustain other farms in the district so they no longer face the threat of having to turn off their wells.
"We've seen where we can have multiple good years in place like the San Luis Valley when it comes to rainfall or snowpack and then one drought year can erase a decade of progress," he said. "So you just can't stick your head in the sand just because you're having one good wet year."
Sharp drop in illegal border crossings continues in February - By Rebecca Santana Associated Press
A sharp drop in illegal border crossings along the Southwest border that started in January after the Biden administration announced stricter immigration measures continued into February, the administration announced Wednesday.
The data released by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection paints a picture of who is attempting to enter the country at a time of intense political controversy with Republicans seeing immigration as a potent issue with voters and accusing President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of not doing enough to secure the southern border.
U.S. Border Patrol officials encountered migrants 128,877 times trying to cross the border in February between the legal border crossings. That's about the same as January's number — 128,913 — and is the lowest number of encounters per month since February 2021, the agency said.
The numbers of encounters doesn't necessarily equate to individual people since some migrants try repeatedly to cross the border. The agency said about 25% of those encountered in February were repeat encounters meaning that at some time during the last 12 months they'd been detained by U.S. officials as they tried to enter the country.
In comparison, U.S. officials stopped migrants 221,693 times between the ports of entry along the Mexican border in December.
Then in early January the administration announced a new policy in which Mexico would take back Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans under a pandemic-era rule that denies migrants the right to seek asylum as part of an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The number of migrants intercepted from those four countries plunged after the new policy went into effect and remained low during February.
At the same time they announced the new policy, the U.S. also agreed to admit up to 30,000 people a month from those four nations on a process called humanitarian parole if they applied online, entered at an airport and found a financial sponsor. According to the CBP figures, 22,755 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans were paroled into the country through that process in February. Humanitarian parole differs from other immigration pathways in large part because it's temporary — often only for a year or two — and doesn't provide a long-term pathway to live in the U.S.
The administration has also proposed generally denying asylum to anyone who travels though another country on their way to the U.S. without seeking protection there — effectively all non-Mexicans who appear at the U.S. southern border. That proposal, which has met with stiff criticism from immigration rights advocates, is currently in a 30-day comment period before it is expected to go into effect when Title 42 expires in May.
According to the CBP report, drug seizures were also up 6% in February compared to January. Fentanyl seizures specifically were up 58%.