Ever since she became a volunteer firefighter in college, Emily Barker thrived in the male-dominated world of wildland firefighting. She traveled across the country with her federal fire crew, hiking into burning forests, buzzing over smoke plumes in a helicopter and sleeping in dirt foxholes.

Women like Barker make up only about 10% of wildland firefighters. But two of the three firefighters killed this weekend in a wind-driven wildfire in western Colorado happened to be women, federal officials said Monday.

Their deaths highlight the equal perils that women in firefighting face in a profession where they are less visible than men.

The Department of the Interior identified the three firefighters as Barker, 38; Sydney Watson, 27; and Nick Hutcherson, 27. Barker and Watson had been assigned to a Helitack unit based in Rifle, Colorado, about 180 miles west of Denver, that uses helicopters to fly crews into wildfires, sometimes rappelling them in.

Hutcherson had been assigned to the Kaibab National Forest in northern Arizona.

As elected officials mourned Monday and ordered flags to be lowered, dozens of firefighters near the Utah-Colorado border were struggling to get control over the fire that killed the three firefighters, battling another day of hot, windy weather that has swelled its size to about 28,000 acres.

That blaze, known as the Snyder fire, is one of several wildfires raging across Arizona, Colorado, Utah and other drought-stricken parts of the West that are primed to burn after a dry winter and record-hot spring. The fires have chased hikers off the Continental Divide Trail, closed parts of Canyonlands National Park, canceled Fourth of July fireworks shows and choked Western skies with smoke.

On Monday, Barker’s family was making sudden preparations to travel from their homes in Michigan to western Colorado so they could attend a memorial for her and the two other firefighters killed this weekend.

“She was the strongest, bravest person,” Barker’s sister, Lisa Karczewski, said in a telephone interview as the family got ready to head to the airport.

Barker discovered firefighting while she was studying ski-area management in northern Michigan. She spent her winters working for the Vail ski resort in Colorado, and her summers doing prescribed burns and fighting fires in Idaho and Colorado, but also Florida and the Carolinas.

“We were terrified when she first began, but as time went on, it became natural,” Karczewski said. “It was, ‘I’m going into a fire.’ ‘OK be safe.’ We knew this was always a risk.”

Federal officials have not offered a detailed account of how the firefighters perished, but said the five-person team became trapped Saturday and had to deploy their emergency shelters, typically a last, desperate act when there is no way to escape a burnover.

Two other firefighters survived and were being treated for burn injuries, but federal officials have not released their identities or conditions. Relatives of Watson and Hutcherson did not respond to phone messages Monday.

Karczewski said she had last spoken with her sister Friday, and they had talked mostly about a mint-chocolate ice cream that Barker loved. She had not even realized that Barker was working the Colorado wildfires.

“Then, we got the call,” she said.

It is far less common for women to be killed while firefighting than men, according to a database of firefighter deaths kept by the U.S. Fire Administration. The agency said that 104 female firefighters had been killed on duty from 1990 to 2024, compared with 3,772 men.

So when news broke of the three deaths in Colorado, many online tributes mistakenly called the firefighters “fallen brothers” or posted artificial intelligence-generated images of three men in fire gear.

“There’s an assumption that it����ap only male,” said Riva Duncan, a retired wildland firefighter who spent 32 years with the U.S. Forest Service and is now president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. “There’s still some people who don’t think we belong.”

Duncan pointed out that male and female firefighters have to pass the same arduous physical-fitness tests, lug the same heavy backpacks through smoldering forests and swing the same axes to cut containment lines.

Some female wildland firefighters have faced harassment and discrimination in their careers, but Barker always felt welcome as one of the few women on a fire line, her sister said. A male colleague this year had asked Barker to help get him into shape for his fitness test.

Off the fire lines, Barker played on a women’s hockey team and snowmobiled and dirt-biked her way across the West. Her left arm had a sleeve of tattooed images of the mountains and desert landscapes she loved.

Karczewski, a teacher, said she often bragged about Barker.

“Look at her, she’s a female wildland fighter,” she would tell her students. “You can do anything.”

This article originally appeared in .

Federal investigators are examining the deaths of three wildland firefighters killed battling the Snyder Mesa fire in western Colorado over the weekend in what officials called a “burnover” event.

A burnover occurs when a fire overtakes firefighters, leaving no opportunity to use escape routes or safety zones. Officials have not detailed the circumstances surrounding the incident in Mesa County near the Utah border, which also left two federal firefighters injured.

Firefighting experts say the industry, in the wake of deadly fires throughout the years, has developed a series of best practices designed to keep people safe in the field.

At the core of these guidelines is the , developed in 1957 by a federal task force in response to 16 fatal fires that had occurred in the two decades prior. Those orders were based on the “general orders” used by the U.S. military.

They include staying informed of weather conditions and forecasts; identifying escape routes and safety zones; staying alert and keeping calm; maintaining communication; and acting decisively.

Those 10 orders spawned an additional 18 “watch-out” situations, which warn firefighters of common risks to avoid in the field. These situations include not scouting a fire; being unfamiliar with weather and uninformed on strategy and hazards; no communication with crew members; and unclear assignments.

“If firefighters follow the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders and are alerted to the 18 Watch-Out Situations, much of the risk of firefighting can be reduced,” the National Park Service says on its .

In 1990, following a fire in Arizona that , officials developed the Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes and Safety Zones system. The LCES, as it’s commonly known, distils the 10 orders and 18 watch-out situations and has become the industry standard for anyone fighting wildfires in the United States.

“This should be muscle memory” for those doing this job, said Joe Stutler, a longtime incident commander who spent 35 years with the U.S. Forest Service.

The five firefighters killed or injured over the weekend deployed fire shelters, federal officials said. These shelters, which have been required equipment for wildland firefighters since 1977, act as portable tent-like coverings that firefighters can jump into during critical situations.

“The fire shelter should be used as a last resort if planned escape routes or safety zones become inadequate and entrapment is imminent,” the National Wildfire Coordinating Group wrote in a . “Carrying a fire shelter should never be considered an alternative to safe firefighting.”

It’s too early to know exactly what happened to the firefighters who died in Colorado, Stutler said. They were identified publicly on Monday as Emily Barker, 38, Nick Hutcherson, 27, and Sydney Watson, 27, of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service and the U.S. Forest Service.

“We may never know what was going through their brains when this happened,” he said.

The risks for those battling wildfires will only heighten as climate change propels bigger, faster and more devastating fires. Dozens of fires have erupted throughout the West this summer as extreme drought leaves fuels ripe for burning.

Colorado previously witnessed one of the deadliest wildland firefighting catastrophes in American history.

The in 1994 near Glenwood Springs killed 14 firefighters on Storm King Mountain after a dry, cold front and heavy winds caused the blaze to jump firelines. Twelve firefighters were unable to outrun the fire, and two more helitack firefighters were killed as they tried to flee.

Three firefighters died and two were injured after being overtaken by flames while battling a wildfire in western Colorado, one of several that have together consumed tens of thousands of acres, federal officials reported Sunday.

The fatal blaze started as two small fires sparked by lightning in eastern Utah: the Snyder Mesa and Jones fires, according to the . Winds pushed the flames east into western Colorado’s Mesa County, where the two fires converged and overtook the already-burning Knowles and Gore fires.

Together, the four fires formed the 28,264-acre , according to .

Five federal firefighters — part of an interagency response to the Knowles and Gore fires – were caught by the rapidly spreading flames in what federal officials described as a “burnover incident,” , an agency created earlier this year to streamline firefighting and fire reduction across public lands.

A burnover is when a wildfire overtakes firefighters or their equipment, leaving them no time to escape. The five firefighters deployed their fire shelters, but the wildfire killed three and injured two, .

“The U.S. Wildland Fire Service stands united with the USDA Forest Service in grief and in our unwavering support for the loved ones left behind. Their bravery, dedication and sacrifice will never be forgotten,” the agency said in a .

None of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service and U.S. Forest Service firefighters who died had been publicly identified as of Sunday. said the office is waiting for all the firefighters’ families to be notified before releasing any names.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis declared a on Saturday and authorized the use of the National Guard to fight the blaze. The fire was last mapped at 28,264 acres on Sunday morning, and updated acreage estimates were not available that evening.

“I’m devastated about the loss of three heroic firefighters who died in the line of duty in Western Colorado,” Polis said in a statement. “The men and women who serve on the front lines of these fires risk their lives to keep us safe and to protect the lands and communities we love. To the loved ones of those lost, and to their fellow crew members — some who are still battling the flames — know that the State of Colorado mourns alongside you.”

Colorado officials are working closely with the Bureau of Land Management and local agencies “to deploy any and all resources needed to fight these fires… and to recover the three firefighters who were lost,” Polis said.

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office asked people to evacuate the potential path of the fire and to turn on irrigation water to saturate the land. The closed public access to lands it manages nearby, including the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area

The sheriff’s office issued pre-evacuation notices to residents living in the Glade Park area, the Kingsview subdivision and the Pollock Canyon Estates, according to a Facebook post. That includes the area south of the Colorado River to BS Road and west of Colorado 340. The sheriff also before the Bureau of Land Management boundary, the Kokopelli Trail Road between Loma and Mack and 16 5/10 Road to Glade Park at Monument Road and Rim Rock Drive, .

Mesa County sheriff’s officials and the American Red Cross opened a Snyder fire evacuation center at the former Faith Heights Church in Grand Junction, which was later , 1400 N. Fifth Street.

Polis declared a second disaster emergency on Sunday for the 572-acre Gold Mountain fire burning north of Ouray, which forced residents in and near Lake Lenore, Panoramic Heights, Redstone Road and Peck’s Trailer Park to evacuate, according to county officials.

Ouray County officials also issued pre-evacuation notices for residents living on County Road 17 from the Whispering Pines area to the Black Lake area, and U.S. 550 was closed in both directions between Ouray and Whispering Pines for the fire, .

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but Ouray County officials believe it started on private land. The city of Ouray sits roughly 96 miles southeast of Grand Junction and 25 miles north of Silverton.

Another three lighting-sparked wildfires were reported in southwestern Colorado’s on Saturday, together scorching more than 10,600 acres, according to the U.S. Forest Service. As of Sunday afternoon, the had merged into a 9,591-acre blaze, and the Doe Canyon fire had consumed roughly 1,046 acres.

The Ferris fire burned across nearly 5,000 acres on Saturday alone, growth that San Juan Team Eight Incident Commander Brad Pietruszka called “.”

At that time, mandatory evacuations had been issued for residents north and east of the still-growing wildfires, . The evacuation area was bordered to the north by Disappointment Road, to the south by the Glade Ranch community, to the west by the fire and to the east by Road 30.

Colorado’s recent wildfires are some of several dozen burning across the country, as consecutive days of hot, dry and windy weather intensify wildfire activity and new fire starts pop up across the region.

The National Weather Service issued a “particularly dangerous situation” red flag warning for southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah on Sunday. Forecast warned in the alert, which remained in effect until 10 p.m., that up to 55 mph wind gusts and 5% humidity would be possible throughout the day.

Some dozen fully or largely uncontained wildfires were burning on nearly 469 square miles in Utah, Colorado, Nevada and Arizona on Sunday, according to Forest Service data. Since the start of 2026, fires across the county have consumed nearly 4,688 square miles, which is more than the 10-year average.

The largest blaze, the , was burning in rugged terrain in southwest Utah. It ballooned Saturday to more than 144 square miles after marching through canyons and mountainsides, destroying part of a ski resort and other summer cabins along the way.

Authorities in Beaver County began working with fire teams on Saturday to assess the extent of the damage, but no estimates were immediately available. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called it bleak in a post on social media, but he thanked crews for what he called “several miraculous stops and saves.”

Just like the Gold Mountain fire burning near Ouray, the cliffs and steep slopes surrounding the Cottonwood fire have made the job even harder, said Alyssa Mason, a spokesperson assigned to the fire.

“It����ap hard to get dozers and other heavy equipment into that. It����ap hard to get engines into that,” she said. “It doesn’t make it impossible to firefight, but it does just kind of slow things down.”

Hundreds of firefighters have arrived in the arid state to battle new starts as well as those that have been growing because of what forecasters called critical fire weather — dangerously low humidity levels, warm temperatures and gusty winds.

The danger is even greater this year because of Utah’s record-low snowpack and its warmest winter on record. Much of the West — including Colorado — is grappling with similar conditions, according to the .

Western Colorado’s wildfires sent waves of smoke across the state on Sunday, prompting state health officials to issue an air quality advisory for many western Colorado counties.

“Areas near and downwind of large fires in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah could have periods of moderate to heavy smoke through at least Monday morning,” an stated.

The air quality alert will remain in effect until at least 9 a.m. Monday and covers Chaffee, Clear Creek, Delta, Dolores, Eagle, Garfield, Gilpin, Grand, Gunnison, Jackson, Lake, Mesa, Montezuma, Moffat, Montrose, Ouray, Park, Pitkin, Rio Blanco, Routt, San Miguel and Summit counties. If visibility drops to less than five miles, the smoke has reached unhealthy levels, state officials said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office is taking a zero tolerance approach to illegally made fires, and the department filmed its officers issuing at least three citations since Stage 1 fire restrictions went into effect last Friday, said patrol sergeant Mike Schilling. The agency made a to warn visitors.

“First and foremost, it’s a priority for the sheriff’s office because we want to keep our community safe,” Schilling said. “The warning is the signage at the trailhead, it’s in (news) stories like these, it’s on social media. Once you start an illegal fire, the time for a warning has passed.”

Stage 1 restrictions prohibit open fires anywhere but in permanent, designated rings built by the U.S. Forest Service. At dispersed campsites, the fire rings are usually made by previous campers, so fires are not permitted there. Additionally, fireworks are prohibited under Stage 1, so don’t expect to light up in the wilderness on the Fourth of July holiday.

But the White River National Forest expects to move to Stage 2 fire restrictions this Friday (June 26), according to spokesperson David Boyd. That means no wood-fueled or charcoal fires whatsoever. Campers are only permitted to use gas stoves to cook or roast marshmallows while out.

Following one of Colorado’s warmest and driest winters on record, most of the state is experiencing drought and is at high risk for wildfires. In Summit County, residential and commercial developments abut the forests, so the potential for fires to cause property damage and displace residents is especially concerning, Schilling said.

Cooking camping meals, s’mores is still possible under Colorado’s fire bans. Here’s how.

When officers issue someone a citation, they are summoned to court where a judge determines individual penalties for each violation.

The White River National Forest encompasses the wilderness around Summit County hotspots like Breckenridge, Keystone and Silverthorne, as well as areas in Vail, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, and more. Last weekend, the Dillon Ranger District team marked about 120 rock fire rings with yellow “no campfire” flags and posted fire restriction signs at more than 120 trailheads, day use, and roadside locations, Boyd said. Additionally, the crew made over 200 contacts with the public, extinguished two abandoned campfires, and issued two warnings.

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office relies on citizens to report illegal fires, so Schilling encouraged people to do so by calling or texting 911.

“While the vast majority come here to be responsible, a lot of folks get out here and say, ‘hey, you know, this is the vacation I've been dreaming about for years and I’m going to make my fire regardless.' We certainly come across that every year,” Schilling said. “We want visitors of Summit County to know that our community takes fire danger extremely seriously.”

Fire managers base decisions about fire restrictions on fuel‑moisture measurements, predicted weather, regional fire activity, and other risk factors. Stage 1 fire restrictions are currently active or forthcoming in the ; the ; the ; the in the Pike-San Isabel National Forests & Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands; the ; and the .

Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced emergency water conservation measures and boating restrictions at both Sylvan Lake State Park in Eagle County and Rifle Gap State Park in Garfield County, according to a Monday, June 22 news release.

Both parks are located within some of the more extreme drought conditions in Colorado. According to the June 18 U.S. Drought Monitor, Eagle County and western Garfield County are experiencing exceptional drought conditions — the worst measured by the monitor.

At Sylvan Lake State Park outside of Eagle, the park’s main source and well, Zurcher Spring, has run completely dry and shows no signs of recovery due to the extreme drought conditions in the region.

A little further west in Garfield County, Rifle Gap State Park is experiencing impacts brought on by the winter’s historically low snowpack and early snowmelt. To combat this, Parks and Wildlife is reducing motorized boat launching to a single lane and has pulled all courtesy docks from the water. Access for hand-launched vessels like kayaks, canoes and stand-up paddleboards will remain unaffected by the closure.

Read more from our partner at .

Projections show that if dry conditions persist, Lake Powell’s water level could dip below a threshold called “minimum power pool” as soon as February. That’s the level below which water can no longer flow through the reservoir’s hydropower turbines.

Without intervention, the projections say, the lake will remain below the critical elevation for the foreseeable future.

The threat of Powell hitting that threshold — 3,490 feet in elevation — has hovered above federal water managers for months as the reservoir has continued to drop to record-low levels. In April, that they would send up to 1 million acre-feet of water from the upstream Flaming Gorge Reservoir to Powell and reduce the amount of water released from Powell to keep the reservoir’s level at 3,500 feet above sea level — which includes a small buffer Reclamation officials want to maintain to stay above the power pool level.

Powell’s water levels continue to drop as Colorado River leaders deal with two crises: one climatological and one political. Long-term drought fueled by climate change has shrunk the Colorado River’s flows as federal officials and water leaders in the seven basin states — including Colorado, home to its headwaters — struggle to agree on longer-term plans for the river’s management.

So far, they’ve failed to find agreement on how to divvy up the usage cuts necessary to adapt to lower flows that reduce the water supply for farmers and residents in a region that’s home to 40 million people.

When Lake Powell’s levels fall below minimum power pool, that means water can no longer flow through the intake tubes for ‘s hydropower facility, which is the primary method for moving water downstream from the reservoir in southern Utah.

Instead, water can move only through much smaller bypass tubes that, for years, have been considered unsafe for long-term use — though Reclamation officials now say they can be operated safely with continuous maintenance.

The bureau’s most recent projections, released Tuesday, show that the emergency measures taken this spring will only be a stopgap, unless extremely wet weather returns.

“We’re going to get to 3,500 of elevation (at Powell) this year, and we’re going to stay there for a while, unless we get snowmaggedon,” said , a senior fellow at the University of Colorado Law School. She previously served as the chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission and as assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The updated projections come on the heels of . It shows that a relatively dry year would crash the river’s water storage system. The two major reservoirs would then fall so low under such a scenario that they essentially would no longer be usable as water savings accounts.

Instead, water managers would be able to pass water downstream only as it flowed into the reservoirs.

“This would be an outcome with devastating consequences,” the five authors stated in the paper.

‘This cannot be allowed to happen’

Bureau of Reclamation officials have said they will operate Lake Mead and Lake Powell to keep their water levels from falling below critical elevations. The federal water managers aim to keep Powell at 3,500 feet or higher and Mead at 975 feet — water levels that allow water to continue flowing through the reservoirs’ hydropower facilities and farther downstream.

Protecting those reservoir levels means that all the water below those elevations is rendered essentially inaccessible, the study authors wrote.

“If you get to those levels and Reclamation won’t allow the reservoirs to go below those levels, it����ap like those reservoirs aren’t there,” Castle said.

Those levels are coming soon, according to the analysis.

Once underwater, Colorado River canyon country reemerges as drought-stricken Lake Powell’s levels drop

The study's authors looked at two potential hydrologies: a year that is moderately wet, with water use remaining relatively unchanged; and one that is moderately dry — though not as dry as this past year — and water use falls.

A moderately wet year would buy only a few years of buffer unless the seven Colorado River basin states substantially reduce their water use, according to the analysis.

Under moderately dry conditions, Powell's level would fall to 3,500 feet above sea level, and Mead's would likely fall to 975 feet shortly after.

Those low reservoir levels would leave water managers with no flexibility to move water to meet the needs of water users in the Lower Basin states: Arizona, California and Nevada.

A reduction in the amount of water flowing from Powell into Mead could cause legal uncertainty across the basin, since the 1922 Colorado River compact requires the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — to pass a certain amount of water downstream from Powell.

Falling reservoir levels at Lake Mead also pose a threat to hydropower capacity at Hoover Dam, which across the Southwest. According to the Bureau of Reclamation's projections, water levels in the Nevada reservoir are projected to fall so low by November that power generation would be cut by 70%. That's because 12 of the dam's 17 turbines are not designed to operate at water levels below 1,035 feet.

The bureau projects that water levels in Mead will recover for a few months before plunging downward again in March — and staying below the level needed to avoid severe cuts in power production until at least April 2028, when Reclamation's projections end.

The only way to halt the slump toward a system crash is to bring water use in line with supply, Castle said. Immediate, basinwide water cuts that are unprecedented in size are the only way to prepare for the potential of a relatively dry winter, the authors wrote in the analysis.

"The political incentives to fight for the most favorable outcomes for individual states and water users must be overcome by the necessity of preventing a Colorado River system crash, the consequences of which would be devastating for those same water users," the analysis concludes. "This cannot be allowed to happen."

Backup systems safe, officials say

There is a sliver of good news among the catastrophic forecasts.

If Lake Powell falls below minimum power pool, the only way to release water downstream is through four 8-foot-diameter tubes called the river outlet works. For years, Bureau of Reclamation officials have said the tubes were not designed for long-term use at low water levels, and such use could cause structural damage to the dam.

But officials now say there's a way to safely use the river outlet works, if needed.

Recent studies of the river outlet works have shown that managers can operate the backup tubes continuously in a safe way, said Katrina Grantz, the deputy regional director for Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Region, at a conference in Boulder earlier this month. But the outlets require frequent inspections and maintenance when used continuously, which means that one of the four conduits will routinely be offline.

Over the course of a year, the maintenance rotation will result in an effective capacity of about three and a half outlets operating continuously, bureau spokesman Peter Soeth wrote in an email in response to follow-up questions from The Denver Post.

"The river outlet works were never designed to serve as the primary or long‑term release pathway," Soeth said. "Relying on them continuously would reduce operational flexibility and, over extended periods, could introduce wear that requires more intensive maintenance."

The bureau is studying ways to modify Glen Canyon Dam to deliver water and hydropower once the reservoir's water level drops below minimum power pool, Soeth said.

But any changes would not help in the immediate future — the first round of design appraisals and cost estimates won't be finished until 2027.

The rusted structure was barely hanging on, and its operation was time-consuming for the busy ranchers, who had to lug special tools on all-terrain vehicles and on foot to open or close the mechanism. But it seemed impossible for the tiny district to find the $6.8 million needed to replace the headgate and the rocky diversion dam that pushed water into the canal.

Then legalized sports betting came along, and, with it, millions of dollars for Colorado water projects. The tiny irrigation district, in Moffat County in the far northwest corner of the state, soon became the poster child for how gambling money is benefiting Colorado’s waterways.

The district received a $750,000 grant from the , which doles out money from sports betting tax revenue, said, sustainable food and water program director for , which helped the district land the grant. That led to a matching grant from the program. With those two grants in hand, other organizations jumped on board, and money poured in, she said.

In 2024, the Maybell Irrigation District installed a new headgate that can be opened or closed via cellphone. If a rancher is cutting hay and doesn’t need to irrigate, he can close the gates to match the amount of water he actually needs at that moment, Lane said. And the diversion structure no longer uses boulders to control the water flow. Instead, it’s a modern structure that is the right height for water control.

The project also benefited four fish species, including the threatened humpback chub, and it made river navigation easier for boaters, helping the region’s outdoor recreation economy.

“That $750,000 was really the ball that got it all rolling, that showed people, ‘Oh, this is going somewhere,'” Lane said of that initial state grant.

Since sports betting became legal in May 2020, the state has collected more than $154 million in taxes, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has funneled $140 million to various projects that preserve and conserve Colorado’s precious water. Supporters say the gambling money is a godsend for ranchers, fishermen, paddlers and others who want to protect the state’s water and those who depend on it for their livelihoods. Critics, however, say legalized sports betting has come at a cost — fueling an addiction crisis that the state was unprepared for and is underfunding.

This is the second story in The Denver Post’s three-part series exploring the impact of legalized sports betting in Colorado, including the billions spent on wagers, rising addiction rates, and the impact on athletes and the games they play.

Erin Karney Spaur, executive vice president of the , said she reminds her family members and friends who bet on sports that every time they place a wager, they are helping ranchers like those in Maybell access precious water.

“It����ap exponentially more than we could ever imagine,” she said of sports betting’s impact on ranches and water. “Coloradans like to gamble on sports, and water is the beneficiary.”

‘That’s our ticket’

In 2015, the Colorado Water Conservation Board — at the behest of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper — released a report on how to best conserve and protect the state’s water.

“It made a lot of plans. It set a bit of policy, and it identified two big funding needs,” said , director of western water for the .

The board determined at the time that Colorado needed $100 million per year for projects to improve river and stream health and restoration, to replace the agricultural industry’s aging irrigation systems and to conserve as much water as possible.

“The 2015 water plan put up that price tag and then continued on its merry way,” he said.

But the money wasn’t there.

A consortium of groups with interests in the state’s waterways — including environmental, agricultural and recreational organizations — began meeting to figure out how to fund the water plan. They considered various tax schemes, such as asking the state to put a levy on bottled water or rental cars. But none of their ideas came with an easy path to voter approval — something necessary to raise statewide taxes in Colorado.

“We sat around a table for over a year and a half trying to figure out how to do this, and there were no good options,” Jackson said.

Then, in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a ruling that offered the answer to funding water projects in Colorado: . That decision overturned the , paving the way for states to legalize sports betting.

“I said, ‘That’s it. That’s our ticket,’ ” Jackson said.

Jackson thought Colorado voters would be sympathetic to the state’s water crisis, caused by decades of drought and climate change. They also wagered that a tax on sports betting would be easier for voters to digest because it would only be paid by those who chose to gamble; if someone didn’t want to pay the tax, then they didn’t have to participate, he said.

The legislature agreed to put it on the 2019 ballot, and voters approved with 51% in favor. The bill established a 10% tax on sports betting companies’ revenue.

“Water certainly pushed it over,” Jackson said.

Sports betting was slated to open in Colorado on May 1, 2020. But the big date was a false start. The COVID-19 pandemic hobbled betting like a quarterback with a bum knee.

“Sports betting was legal, and there were no sports,” Jackson said. “And I thought to myself, ‘What the hell did we just do?’ ”

Gross sports betting revenue in Colorado was $2.6 million, with 25% of wagers placed on table tennis. Tax revenue was just $96,544.

But that freeze on sports did not last, and the gambling money began flowing as rapidly as Clear Creek during the early summer snowmelt.

The revenue stream

Colorado leaders soon realized sports betting was far more lucrative for tax revenues than had been predicted. In the first six years of legalized sports betting, the has reported record-setting figures each year.

“It����ap been hugely successful,” said Drew Peternell, Colorado state director at . “Revenues from sports betting have greatly exceeded any expectations when these mechanisms were put in place.”

By May 2021, when sports betting in Colorado hit its first anniversary, monthly tax revenue hit $635,640 — more than five times what sports wagering had brought in during the same month just a year prior, according to data from the Department of Revenue.

In its most recent report on sports-betting taxes, the department reported it collected $4.4 million in April. The news releases often tout the success of sports betting and the benefits it brings to state waterways. They also include links to , the state’s website for problem gambling resources.

The April tax revenue was 28% more than the amount collected in April 2025, and taxes collected for the current fiscal year through April were at $40.7 million, up 35% over the same period last year.

Thus far, the largest single-month record for tax revenue came in January when the state collected $5 million from $57.8 million in revenue. Coloradans bet $630.2 million, with $119 million wagered on professional football in a month when the Broncos made a run to the conference championship game.

Proposition DD’s 10% tax on net proceeds from sports betting means casinos and companies doing business in Colorado pay the tax after they pay out winning bets and federal taxes.

But the Colorado General Assembly placed a $29 million-a-year cap on sports betting tax revenue when it approved Proposition DD for the statewide ballot. If the state collected more than $29 million each year, the overage was to be refunded to the casinos and licensed gaming companies.

Proposition DD also determined how sports betting proceeds were to be divvied up between programs, with water projects receiving 93% of the tax revenue.

The first projection estimated that sports betting would generate about $16 million annually and that water projects would receive $14.9 million.

Six percent of the tax revenue, or an estimated $960,000, would be set aside in a special fund that would be distributed to Colorado’s three casino cities and other entities that received gaming revenue if they could prove that the new sports betting market caused them to lose money due to decreased bets on traditional gambling and horse racing.

So far, no one has tapped that fund.

Problem gambling would receive just $130,000 annually for establishing a crisis hotline and training for gambling addiction counselors. That amount was increased to $2.5 million annually in 2023.

The Post interviewed seven people whose agencies receive sports betting tax revenue, but only one — Jackson — said they bet on sports themselves. And only one person, who did not want their family’s story to be told publicly, said they sometimes were bothered by the addiction problem because a loved one had died by suicide after gambling away his money.

The tax revenue proved so lucrative that water proponents returned to the legislature to ask for another statewide ballot. This time, which voters approved in 2024, eliminated the $29 million cap, meaning casinos and licensed sports betting companies can no longer receive refunds. And more money will pour into the water conservation fund.

In 2025, water proponents returned to the revenue well again.

This time, they asked the General Assembly to eliminate a clause that had allowed sports betting companies to use their free bet promotions as tax write-offs.

In those promotions, DraftKings, FanDuel and others lure prospective gamblers by offering “free bonus bets” when users apply a promo code advertised on television.

During the NFL’s wild card playoff weekend between Jan. 10 and 12, for example, FanDuel offered a promotion in which bettors would receive $300 when they placed a $5 bet on a game. In the past, FanDuel would have been allowed to write that $300 off as a tax deduction.

But starting in January, that tax deduction was no longer allowed, which means FanDuel and other companies doing business in Colorado pay even more in taxes.

For years, the sports betting companies had argued that losing the tax deduction would force them to pull back on those offers and lead to fewer players, Jackson said. But Colorado watched other states that did not offer similar tax deductions and realized those promotions were still available to gamblers.

“It’s still the primary marketing scheme,” Jackson said. “Colorado was very much an outlier in allowing the deduction.”

Colorado’s water woes

As the planet’s temperature rises, Colorado’s rivers and streams become more threatened by drought.

Last year was for Colorado after the state marked its 10th-warmest year out of 130 years of data, according to the at .  It was the 51st driest year on record, and a swath of northwestern Colorado fell into exceptional drought — the most dire category recorded by the .

And 2026 has brought even hotter and drier weather, with the winter being the warmest on record and snowpack at its lowest levels since records started being kept in 1941.

While drought dries up lakes, rivers and streams, it also impacts almost every person living in Colorado. People live with a shortage of drinking water supplies, irrigation becomes trickier for ranchers, rivers dry up for rafters and fishermen, fish and wildlife struggle, and manufacturers must cope with less water.

Less water also boosts the state’s risk for devastating wildfires and can cause insect infestations or forest diseases to spread.

“Climate change is water change in Colorado, and we need every resource we can to put towards building a more resilient future,” said Lauren Ris, the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s director.

The conservation board intends to help Coloradans address all of those issues with the  through the state’s water plan.

“It primarily focuses on water supply, not water quality,” Ris said.

Projects awarded money during the most recent grant cycle in September included:

• to build a new water storage facility at the Jurgens Reservoir in Weld County that will increase the Lower Latham Reservoir Company’s irrigation supply
• to Adams 12 Five Star Schools to evaluate 54 irrigation systems across 475 acres of irrigated landscape and develop a water conservation plan for the district
• for a Colorado River conservation exhibit at the Confluence Center of Colorado in Mesa County

The water board employs a team of regional grant managers who live and work in the areas they serve. They become familiar with their region’s needs and help decide which projects are worth funding, said Jeannine Shaw, the grants section chief at the water board.

The more organizations applying for a grant together, the more competitive the application becomes, she said. And all of the grants awarded require the applicants to find matching funds, doubling the amount of money available.

And, as more money is spent on sports betting, Colorado can expand its outreach to all four corners of this parched state.

“The difference that makes on the ground is pretty incredible,” Ris said.

In the San Luis Valley, ranchers have long spread water over their grasslands when temperatures start to freeze to create a sheet of ice over the vegetation. As the ice slowly melts during the spring thaw, it seeps into the ground, recharging the water table. It also helps revegetate retired farmland and creates a habitat for wintering birds and wildlife, said Fay Hartman, conservation director for the southwest region of .

In September 2025, American Rivers received a $199,761 grant funded by sports betting to study how the winter ice sheet practice actually benefits the environment. The grant will provide the money for a groundwater study so scientists can collect data by placing groundwater wells at the near Saguache. American Rivers secured $145,956 in matching funds.

There just wasn’t good data on the benefits of creating the winter sheet ice, Shaw said. Different groups wanted to quantify what happens so they would be better informed about the practice and find ways to improve it.

The project, named Frozen Assets, demonstrates the water conservation board’s desire to support innovative ideas for Colorado’s water management, Ris said.

“We’re really able to test some of these theories and use this funding where there is not a whole lot of other opportunity out there to really test some concepts and pilot some things that could have pretty big benefits,” Ris said.

So far, Ris and others who are working to solve Colorado’s water woes believe sports betting revenue is the lifebuoy the state needs to start solving the crisis. It’s not enough, they said, but it’s charting the right course as the state responds to increasing drought, floods and wildfires worsened by climate change.

“We’re thrilled,” she said. “What we really needed was a steady funding stream for water projects, and that����ap what this proved to be.”

READ PART 3 NEXT: Sports betting is changing the game for Colorado’s fans and athletes as big money adds new pressures

Several campgrounds across the state will be unable to provide visitors with water because their wells are low or dry amid one of the worst droughts on record, according to a spokesperson for the USDA Forest Service. Those include the Lowry, Prospector, Windy Point and Marvine campgrounds in the White River National Forest; and the Iron City, Spillway and Jefferson Creek campgrounds in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest.

Additionally, the spring-fed water supply at Sylvan Lake State Park in Eagle is critically low and may run dry during the season. The website advises filling camper tanks ahead of arriving and notes limited potable water is available at the visitor center.

Conditions can change at any time, so it’s worth contacting the local ranger where you plan to travel to see about water availability. As a rule of thumb, bring your own.

Colorado is facing drought after the winter saw record-low snowpack and an uncharacteristically warm spring. On June 2, Gov. Jared Polis declared a state of emergency to begin coordinating the state’s response to the impending lack of water.

At the local and regional level, many water utilities — including Denver Water — have enacted outdoor watering restrictions for the spring and summer. Aurora City Council is also discouraging restaurants from automatically serving water to guests, in an effort to count ‘every single drop.’

In the wee hours of June 3, he got up every hour to check the livestream of workers laying the final layer of roller-compacted concrete on the dam, a major milestone more than two decades in the making. At 3 a.m., workers — completing the main structure of what is now Colorado’s tallest dam and finishing a long-held plan by Denver Water to expand Gross Reservoir.

Martin, the program manager for the dam project, had worked for 12 years on the $600 million effort to replace the old Gross Dam with one that is 131 feet taller, tripling the reservoir’s storage. Crews still have some finishing work remaining, he said, but the major work to raise the dam is now complete.

“Denver Water was not intent on building the tallest dam in Colorado,” Martin said later that morning, standing atop the now-470-foot dam that towers above South Boulder Creek. “This was about water security.”

But it remains unclear whether Denver Water will ever be able to fill the reservoir to its new full capacity as a yearslong court battle lumbers on between the utility and environmentalists.

Months of mediation between the parties have failed. Denver Water is now asking a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court judge’s 2025 order barring the utility from filling the expanded reservoir and ordering the yearslong federal permitting process to be redone. A panel of three judges for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on July 31 in Santa Fe.

U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello in 2024 found that federal regulators violated environmental protection laws when they failed to properly analyze the environmental impact of the project or consider reasonable alternatives to the dam expansion that would be less harmful. She later issued the order against filling the reservoir.

Environmental groups argued in court, and in their filings, that regulators failed to evaluate how siphoning more water from the drought-stricken Colorado River would impact the basin as a whole. And the groups charged that they failed to weigh other project options that wouldn’t require the clear-cutting of a half-million trees or risk damage to wetlands.

The case has drawn the attention of other Front Range water providers, lawyers from across the county and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — all of which have filed briefs in the appeals case.

“This case has reverberated across the country and the Colorado River Basin,” said Gary Wockner, the executive director of , one of the environmental groups pursuing the case. “Everyone’s watching to see what the outcome is here.”

In their legal filings, Denver Water leaders argued that Arguello erred in her decision, which put “decades of work and this critical water supply project in jeopardy,” the utility’s attorneys wrote in their brief to the appeals court. The attorneys urged the appeals court to intercede and “prevent yet another public infrastructure project from being held hostage by litigation.”

Martin, fresh off a breakfast burrito party celebrating the dam’s completion, remained adamant that the reservoir would eventually be filled.

“We will put more water in it,” he said.

Considering climate change

While the dam structure itself is complete, at least a year of work remains to fully finish the project, Martin said. Construction crews must finish the spillway and place the final topper foot of concrete on the completed dam structure. Divers will place a gate between the reservoir’s water and the dam’s intake tubes.

But the crews on site will diminish in the coming months, from up to 500 workers a day to closer to 100. On the morning of June 3, crane operators already worked to remove from the dam crest the heavy machinery that was necessary to build the main structure.

“It has been 20 long, hard years to move through, but Denver Water has been committed to providing more resilient water supplies to our community,” Martin said.

Denver Water began the permitting process for the Gross Reservoir expansion in 2002 and started construction in 2022. The planned expansion of the reservoir outside Nederland will increase the reservoir’s capacity from 42,000 acre-feet to 120,000 acre-feet — enough additional water for about 156,000 households’ annual use.

The expansion will also provide more storage in the utility’s northern fork of its supply network, which Denver Water leaders have said is critical if the larger southern supply system is impacted by fire, mudslides or drought.

Federal litigation over the project had already begun when construction crews started their work. In 2024, when Arguello ruled the project permitting did not comply with federal law, the dam was half finished and hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent.

The panel of appeals court judges will evaluate soon whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers followed federal environmental protection laws when issuing permits for the dam expansion and whether Arguello’s order blocking the filling of the reservoir was reasonable.

One of the key tensions in the legal arguments is whether the Corps of Engineers should have evaluated how climate change will impact the Colorado River, from which the reservoir draws most of its water. The water is transported through the Moffat Tunnel from Grand County, under the Continental Divide and into the South Boulder Creek drainage near Rollinsville.

Opponents of the dam — and the lower court judge — argued that the federal agency should have analyzed whether there would be sufficient water for Denver Water to bring across the Continental Divide to warrant the expansion of the reservoir. And if so, they argued that the agency should have weighed how taking that water would impact the rest of the basin downstream of the diversion.

Denver Water’s attorneys, in their filings to the appeals court, have argued that federal law requires an analysis of how a project impacts the environment, not how climate change could impact a project.

They also wrote that forcing the Corps of Engineers to now consider alternatives to raising the dam height is a moot point, since the dam is already complete and there are no other feasible alternatives at this point.

Allowing a project to stand because construction continued while its legality was being questioned would set a dangerous precedent, Wockner said. The environmental groups suing over the project are simply asking Denver Water to follow the law, he said.

“This is just plain ol’ law enforcement,” he said.

Outside interest

The yearslong case has drawn the interest of other Colorado local governments and water suppliers.

A slew of Front Range water providers — Aurora Water, the South Metro Water Supply Authority and Pueblo’s water board — weighed in, supporting Denver Water. The organizations, which provide water to more than 800,000 people, said the district court judge erred in her decision and that her error “introduces uncertainty and legally-unjustified burdens into the federal permitting process” for the groups’ water infrastructure projects.

The cities of Boulder and Lafayette also filed a brief urging the court to allow the reservoir to be filled. They inked a deal with Denver Water that would allow them to store water in the reservoir that can be released to support the ecosystem of South Boulder Creek.

Denver Water leaders for years have said that, along with the plan for creek releases, they mitigated the environmental damage from the dam project with stream restoration on the headwaters of the Colorado River. They also transferred 500 acres of land near the Indian Peaks Wilderness to the U.S. Forest Service to compensate for the acres that would be drowned by the expanded body of water.

Others urged the appeals court to uphold Arguello’s ruling.

A brief filed by 26 former employees of the Environmental Protection Agency — many of whom worked for the federal agency for decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations — supported Arguello’s decision, stating that the Corps of Engineers failed to consider other less-damaging alternatives to the reservoir expansion.

“This process matters because it could be exploited by applicants in future cases unrelated to Denver Water’s proposal,” the former employees wrote in their brief.

Another filing by 10 natural resources law professors — including several from the University of Denver and the University of Colorado — supported environmentalists’ argument that the federal permitting process ignored how drawing more water for the reservoir would impact the Colorado River Basin.

“The Colorado River cannot support additional withdrawals of this magnitude,” especially where the diversion takes the water over the Continental Divide and out of the river basin, their brief states.

Both Denver Water and Wockner point to this year’s historic drought as evidence for their arguments.

This year’s drought is exactly when the expanded reservoir is needed most, Martin said. The extra water that could be stored in the reservoir would bolster the utility’s supplies for its 1.5 million customers across metro Denver. If it’s allowed to fill up, the expanded Gross Reservoir will increase Denver Water’s total storage by 11% and storage in the north system by 146%.

“In the future when this happens, we’re going to have more flexibility and more resilience,” Martin said.

But that drought has also pushed the larger Colorado River system close to a crash, Wockner said. Federal water managers have sent water down from one reservoir in an emergency action to keep the level of one of the basin’s largest reservoirs, Lake Powell, from falling so low it cannot pass water through its hydropower system.

Diverting more water from the basin to the Front Range will only worsen that crisis, Wockner said.

“It is the worst time in history to be overturning a climate case on the Colorado River,” he said.

“There is a 63% chance of a very strong El Niño during November (to) January that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950,” according to .

The weather pattern, marked by natural warming of the Pacific Ocean, occurs on average every two to seven years, and typically lasts nine to 12 months.

El Nino is here and scientists fear it’ll be big, bad and costly with heat, floods, droughts, fires

It primarily impacts the Northern Hemisphere in winter, bringing drier weather to the northern parts of the United States and wetter conditions across the southern United States. Colorado falls in the middle of those two regions, but experts say the pattern typically brings wetter weather to the state.

A particularly strong El Niño season can also shift the Pacific jet stream, leading to more winter storms over California and the southern United States, according to NOAA.

"Even very strong El Niño events do not lead to the expected impact everywhere, but stronger events can more significantly tilt the odds in favor of expected outcomes," according to the advisory.

Colorado was experiencing La Niña conditions, which normally brings snow to Colorado’s northern mountains and dry weather to the rest of the state, until April.

This past winter, the state saw one of its lowest snowpacks on record. Earlier this month, Gov. Jared Polis declared a statewide drought emergency. Nearly all of the state is in some form of drought.