Michael Sakas is a climate/environment reporter for CPR News. She joined Colorado Public Radio in 2016 after receiving one of CPR’s year-long fellowships.
Education:
Bachelor’s degree in English education; Michael is currently working on her master’s degree in technical communication at Colorado State University.
Professional background:
Michael came to Colorado Public Radio in 2016 after receiving one of the organization’s year-long fellowships. Through that program, she worked in various areas of the newsroom learning and honing her reporting skills before earning a permanent position as general assignment reporter and producer.
Michael got her start in journalism at the radio station at Colorado State University where she worked on-air shifts and was later named station manager. During her tenure as a student at CSU, she served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper and led the school’s reporting efforts during the Aurora theater shooting.
Water leaders, agriculture producers and environmentalists met in Grand Junction to discuss many ongoing problems caused by use and drought but few solutions.
The cuts are aimed at Arizona and Nevada, which were expected to help create a plan that would drastically reduce their use of the river. No plan was delivered.
The reservoirs on the Colorado River, which starts in the mountains of Colorado and supplies more than 40 million people in the West with water, have hit critically low levels in the last year.
The states in the Colorado River basin have two months to come up with a plan to drastically reduce the amount of water they use. If they don’t, the federal government could step in.
Colorado could be more like Arizona by 2080, new research suggests. The drier and warmer conditions would mean less snow melt making its way from the Rocky Mountains into the Colorado River.
Chairman Manuel Heart of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe said as water issues become more challenging, tribes need to be at the table of the state’s water policy nonprofit.
Douglas County commissioners decided they couldn’t use federal COVID relief money to pump water from the south, but will continue to consider the controversial water project.
Last year, the federal government ordered emergency water releases from Blue Mesa to help protect Lake Powell. There’s worry that will happen again, so the marinas will stay closed.
An extra million acre-feet of water will be kept in Lake Powell to prop it up, protect hydropower production and buy time for additional action in the Colorado River basin.