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(NEW YORK) — Several regions in the West could be facing worsening drought conditions, increased wildfire risk, and reduced water supplies due to record-breaking temperatures and minimal winter snowpack.

Much of the West has been coping with prolonged drought conditions that are now being worsened by historically low seasonal snowpack and persistent record-breaking temperatures. With mountain snowpack sharply reduced, the region’s water supplies are facing mounting challenges and elevated wildfire risk is occurring earlier than usual.

More than half of the West continues to experience drought conditions of varying intensity, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The ongoing drought was compounded by the region’s warmest winter on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The drought and record-warm winter were followed by unprecedented, record-breaking heat in March, further intensifying conditions across the region.

Rounds of rain and mountain snow are expected to impact parts of the West in the coming weeks.

However, a full recovery is unlikely in the near term, meaning many detrimental impacts could persist, or even intensify, through the rest of the year. However, the long-term outlook remains uncertain, with the strength of the upcoming monsoon season and the potential development of El Niño and other influential factors.

Record low snowpack
Every major river basin and state in the West is experiencing a snow drought, a period of abnormally little snowpack for the time of year, according to NOAA.

The snow drought has significantly worsened in recent weeks following the unprecedented record-breaking March heat in the region. Snowpack is a significant indicator of drought conditions but not the only one.

Many major river basins, including the Colorado River Basin, are experiencing record-low season-to-date snowpack levels. A key metric in assessing these conditions is snow water equivalent, the amount of water contained within the snowpack. It serves as a critical indicator of the West’s water supply, helping determine how much runoff will flow into rivers and reservoirs during the spring melt.

When there is a snow drought in the West, it means “there will be a lack of available water due to the low snowpack to meet the water supply demands of the critical economic sectors we have,” Jason Gerlich, regional drought early warning system coordinator for the NOAA-National Integrated Drought Information System, told ABC News.

While many areas received average or above-average precipitation in the fall and early winter, warmer temperatures led much of it to fall as rain rather than snow, resulting in unusually low snowpack, which typically acts as a natural reservoir.

“If winter precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow, our relationship with water in the West becomes even shakier,” said Casey Olson, a climate scientist with the Utah Climate Center. “A gallon of winter rain that immediately runs off downstream is not nearly as helpful come July as a gallon of snowpack that melts in April or May. They are not equivalent gallons of precipitation in terms of our ability to use them when we need them the most.”

Snowpack across the western United States typically peaks in late March or early April, marking a critical point in the region’s water supply outlook. While additional mountain snowfall remains possible through April, and in some higher elevations, into May, recovery to normal snowpack is not climatologically possible at this point, Gerlich noted.

Drought on its own already stresses water supplies, agriculture, and ecosystems. But when winter fails to deliver significant mountain snow, those impacts can intensify. In some states, up to about 75 percent of water supplies can come from melting snow, according to the USGS.

Mounting water supply concerns
The Colorado River provides water for more than 40 million people and fuels hydropower resources in seven states: California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Major reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin remain well below average, the agency’s latest data shows, heightening concerns about water availability across the region.

Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir in the United States, is one of them. Water levels have dropped roughly 7 feet so far this year and are forecast to continue a gradual decline through the months ahead. Despite the recent drop, the reservoir remains more than 8 feet above its record low set in April 2023.

However, current projections suggest that level could be approached, or even challenged again, by late summer if dry conditions persist.

Denver Water, the city’s public water utility, announced water restrictions for the first time since 2013 on Wednesday, seeking a 20% reduction in water use.

“The snowpack within Denver Water’s collection system has deteriorated significantly and continues to decline,” said Nathan Elder, Denver Water’s manager of water supply. “Snowpack levels in both basins are now the lowest observed in the past 40 years, with accelerated melting underway.”

Experts warn that restrictions are likely to expand in multiple states as the year progresses, barring significant changes.

Wildfire concerns increase; Long-term risk remains uncertain
A large portion of the West will likely face an elevated wildfire risk this spring and summer driven by low snowpack, dry soils, and above-average temperatures, leaving vegetation drier and more flammable than usual.

However, experts say the long-term wildfire outlook for the region is less certain than it might seem and the risk could vary in intensity in the coming months, depending on conditions.

“Low snowpack and fire don’t have a one-to-one relationship, but low snowpack can lead to an early start to the fire season,” Gerlich said.

The record-breaking March heat further dried the landscape, priming it for wildfires earlier than usual. Parts of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico have already seen impactful wildfires this year. Experts say the long-term wildfire outlook hinges on how several key conditions develop over the next few months.

“One positive right now is that the last few years have resulted in limited growth of the fine fuels that are quick to burn, so that does help temper fire risk for areas in the West, however, the lack of snowpack this year presents conditions through the high timber forests where fire risk this summer could be very high,” Olson added.

The latest outlook from the National Interagency Fire Center shows an overall near-average risk of significant wildland fires across the West through May with a more widespread above-average risk unfolding across the Four Corners region, including parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona in June.

“The Southwest looks to continue with the warm and dry seasonal pattern. One source of optimism is for the possibility of an active monsoon pattern this summer,” said Olson. “An active monsoon system in general should provide some relief to portions of the Southwest states, the question remains exactly where that relief would focus, and we won’t have a good handle on that until later this spring.”

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(WASHINGTON) — More than two dozen Senate Democrats are launching an independent investigation into the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over a rule change on how the agency calculates the health benefits from curbing air pollution.

The EPA wrote in its regulatory impact analysis last month that it would no longer apply a dollar value to the health benefits that result from its regulations for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone because the agency says there’s too much uncertainty in the estimates. In the past, the EPA calculated a dollar value based on the health benefits of reducing air pollution, which included the number of premature deaths and illnesses avoided, such as asthma attacks.

The senators described the new policy as “irrational” and said it will lead to the EPA rejecting actions that would impose “relatively minor costs” on polluting industries that could result in “massive benefits” to public health, according to a letter sent to the EPA on Thursday and obtained by ABC News.

“The only beneficiaries will be polluting industries, many of which are among President Trump’s largest donors,” the senators wrote.

Led by Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works Ranking Member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the senators are requesting documents and information about how EPA made this determination by Feb. 26.

The decision to not quantify the health benefits of environmental regulations is “completely unsupported” and “a very stark departure” from the way the EPA has worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations over the last several decades, said Richard L. Revesz, dean emeritus at the New York University School of Law who specializes in environmental and regulatory law and policy.

The regulatory impact analysis does not cite any science or economics and did not allow for public comments, Revesz told ABC News. The approach was also not submitted to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, “which is standard,” nor was it submitted for peer review, he added.

“Each of those things are necessary elements for changing scientific policies like this, and EPA violated every single one of them,” Revesz said.

Senate democrats are seeking the basis on which the EPA made the decision; what the EPA willl take into account when undertaking Clean Air Act rulemaking; whether the EPA has discussed ceasing to quantify health effects of other pollutants; and whether the EPA consulted with any third parties, including the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Surgeon General, public health experts and interested civil society groups.

It was industry executives who pushed for benefit-cost analysis during Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s, said Janet McCabe, visiting professor at Indiana University’s McKinney School of Law and former deputy administrator of the EPA between 2021 and 2024. In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12866, which instructs each agency to perform rigorous cost benefit analysis for any rule or regulation to be implemented.

“There’s a whole field of environmental economics where models and analytical methods and data collection have evolved on both the cost and the benefit side to help decision-makers and the public understand,” McCabe told ABC News.

While the EPA points to uncertainties in the estimates, assigning a number to monetize health benefits is “very defensible” because of the vast number of studies that allow economists to estimate ranges of health impacts in terms of monetary value, McCabe said.

In the past, when the EPA felt like it could not rigorously assign a number to either cost or health benefit, “it would say so,” McCabe said.

The EPA has received the letter and will respond through the proper channels, an EPA spokesperson told ABC News.

PM2.5 and ozone — soot and smog — are two of the most dangerous and widespread pollutants in the U.S., according to health and environmental policy experts. They are produced by a number of sources, including emissions from vehicles, power plants, the agriculture industry and oil refineries.

The agency is still considering the impacts that fine particulate matter and ozone emissions have on human health, like it “always has,” but that it will not be monetizing the impacts “at this time,” an EPA spokesperson told ABC News last month.

“EPA is fully committed to its core mission of protecting human health and the environment by relying on gold standard science, not the approval of so-called environmental groups that are funded by far-left activists,” the EPA spokesperson said.

The new EPA rule could prove dangerous to human health in the future because it will make it easier for the Trump administration to weaken air pollution controls, the experts who spoke with ABC News said. The EPA will only have the cost to industry to consider when making policy decisions without factoring in the benefits to health, the experts said.

“There will be nothing on the health side to balance them,” McCabe said. “That will make rules much easier to justify from a cost benefit perspective, because all you will see is the costs.”

In its regulatory impact analysis published in January 2024, the EPA calculated the benefit avoided morbidities and premature death in the year 2032 as worth between $22 billion and $46 billion. In February 2024, when the EPA tightened the amount of PM2.5 that could be emitted by industrial facilities, it estimated that the rule would prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths by 2032.

This data will no longer be considered under the new rule.

“It’s not even estimating how many deaths that is, even though the models for doing both things have been very well established for a long, long time,” Revesz said.

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(NEW YORK) — A man who was seen on video being beaten and wrongfully arrested by two NYPD officers at a liquor store in Brooklyn has filed a notice saying he plans to sue the department over the incident.

Timothy Brown told reporters Tuesday that he felt “humiliated, disrespected and embarrassed” by the arrest and will never be the same after the April 14 incident.

Brown, a home health aide and security guard, was buying wine at the liquor store after work when he was suddenly approached by two plainclothes detectives who allegedly seized him and attacked him as other customers looked on in shock, according to the notice of claim that he filed with the city.

“What happened to me should not happen to anyone else. It was wrong and it was disgusting. My life will never be the same,” Brown, who was seen with an apparent limp in his walk, holding a cane, and wearing an arm brace, said Tuesday.

The New York Police Department has not immediately commented on the notice, which seeks $100 million in punitive damages over several alleged claims including negligence, false arrest, assault and battery.

The incident was filmed by bystanders and the detectives were not wearing body cameras, according to the notice.

The notice states that NYPD policy requires officers to wear or activate body worn cameras during narcotics enforcement operations.

The NYPD claimed that the undercover detectives allegedly witnessed a narcotics purchase of crack cocaine and that the suspect was seen wearing the same clothes as Brown.

Police said there were no drugs or contraband found on Brown after his arrest, and that he was not the suspect they were looking for. However, the NYPD issued Brown a ticket for resisting arrest and obstruction of government administration.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office ultimately dismissed the charges against Brown.

Brown contests the accusations that he resisted arrest.

“I never resisted arrest not at all,” he said. “There was nothing I could do, I was being beating and battered.”

The detectives did not identify themselves “adequately” when confronting Brown and used “gratuitous and excessive force,”  according to the notice.

The notice contends that Brown was beaten for eight minutes, “slammed into a glass display wall and shelving stocked with glass bottles, causing numerous bottles to shatter” and thrown and dragged across the floor “through broken glass.”

Brown suffered “contusions, lacerations, a black eye, head and facial trauma and injuries to his leg,” according to the notice that he filed.

The two detectives involved in the incident — identified by the department as Volkan Maden and Michael Algerio — are under internal NYPD investigation, had their badges and guns stripped, and are serving on modified duty, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Additionally, the narcotics module responsible for the incident has been disbanded, the supervising sergeant involved in the incident was placed on modified duty and six other detectives were reassigned, according to the notice. The NYPD has not confirmed these actions.

“We will have more to say about it as the investigation unfolds, but I understand the community’s interest in it, because it is an upsetting video,” Tisch told reporters during an unrelated news conference on April 15.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani echoed that sentiment in a social media post a day after the incident.

“The violence used by NYPD officers in this video is extremely disturbing and unacceptable. Officers should never treat a person this way,” he said.

Detectives Endowment Association President Scott Munro, however, criticized the mayor’s comments in a social media post on April 15 and called for more facts to come out.

“NYPD detectives put their lives on the line daily, doing the dangerous work politicians would never have the courage to do,” he said.

Brown and his mother told reporters that they were disappointed that have not been contacted by the mayor or Tisch.

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