The Elkhorn fire, northeast of Durango, grew in size, but the Rim Road fire, on the Southern Ute Reservation, did not grow and reached enough containment for officials to lift evacuation orders for that fire.

Elkhorn fire

The Elkhorn fire burning grew more than 100 acres overnight, but is moving away from homes, fire officials said Monday.

The fire, approximately 13 miles outside of Durango, grew to 314 acres since Sunday, when it was roughly 204 acres. The fire remains uncontained, but crews were working Sunday to establish containment lines to keep the blaze from moving west toward homes.

Fire officials have ordered no additional evacuations since Sunday afternoon. The mandatory evacuation area is bordered to the south by Stevens Creek and to the west by County Road 253, County Road 250 and the Animas River, according to the county’s evacuation map. The north and east sides of the evacuation zone extended into the San Juan National Forest.

At least 181 firefighters and four helicopters were set to work the fire on Monday. Firefighters on Sunday night identified some new spot fires in the Bear Creek drainage sparked by the blaze and worked to contain them.

The fire ignited Saturday afternoon and is burning in dense scrub oak, primarily in the San Juan National Forest east of U.S. 550. The vegetation in the area is extremely dry, making it more flammable, fire officials said Monday.

Residents can call 970-385-8700 between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. for updated evacuation information or view the current map online at readylaplata.org.

An evacuation shelter is open at Escalante Middle School in Durango.

Rim Road fire

Another fire burning in southwestern Colorado did not grow overnight and officials lifted evacuation notices.

The Rim Road fire on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation remained at 114 acres on Monday. Fire crews had established 25% containment of the blaze.

Officials at 1 p.m. Monday lifted evacuation notices for homes in the vicinity.

“Fire behavior has remained moderate, but crews remain vigilant and prepared to respond to any changes,” according to a news release Monday afternoon.

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Scammers are placing fake QR codes on parking signs in Denver that send users to international websites instead of the city’s parking app.

The first batch of fake codes appeared in Cherry Creek the first week in July, said Nancy Kuhn, spokeswoman for Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. City workers canvassed the area and scraped off the stickers.

Then, last week, more fake codes appeared along Broadway and Lincoln Street in the Baker and Capitol Hill neighborhoods.

The fake codes are printed on stickers and placed on signs that instruct people how to pay for parking. Once scanned, they take users to a website where they are instructed to enter their personal and credit card information.

The city only uses an app called Pay By Phone to collect parking fees, Kuhn said.

“We’re not going to send you to a website and ask for your credit card,” she said.

The city also generally does not use QR codes on parking signs, except for in the Highland neighborhood. In that neighborhood, some parking signs have a QR code that will direct a user to download the Pay By Phone app.

The city’s QR codes in the Highland neighborhood have green dots in the center and are only on overhead signs, Kuhn said.

“If you run across (one on) a meter outside of LoHi, or if you see one in Cherry Creek, they’re likely fake,” she said.

City officials are asking anyone who finds a fake QR code to report it by calling 311. Denver police have been alerted to the issue as well, Kuhn said.

“We’re trying to address this as quickly as possible,” she said.

Anyone who received a parking citation because they paid the scam website instead of the city should contest the ticket, Kuhn added.

The wolf or wolves traveled broadly in Moffat County, from watersheds near the Wyoming border to the dry, rolling hills northwest of Craig along U.S. 40, according to the monthly map released Wednesday by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. At least one wolf was also present west of Meeker and north of Rifle.

Otherwise, the state’s wolves primarily remained in the central and northern mountains between June 24 and July 22, including in areas around Steamboat Springs, Vail, Leadville, Salida and Aspen. At least one wolf was active in the mountains north of Durango during the period.

The new map comes as CPW continues to monitor for new pups from the state’s three new packs: the One Ear pack in Jackson County, the King Mountain pack in Routt County and the Three Creeks pack in Rio Blanco County.

The Routt County pack produced at least four new pups, and the state’s already-established pack, the Copper Creek pack, produced an unknown number of pups this spring, CPW officials previously said.

CPW’s monthly maps show which watersheds at least one wolf traveled in during the previous month.

On Wednesday, CPW also released the results of investigations into the deaths of two wolves in the reintroduction program in the spring.

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It was the first time larvae from the destructive invasive species had been found in the river in Colorado. For nearly a year, despite increased sampling, state wildlife officials didn’t see any more evidence of the mussels.

But their hopes were dashed earlier this month when Colorado Parks and Wildlife detected three more tiny larvae in the stretch of the Colorado River between Glenwood Springs and Silt. The mussels — known to devastate ecosystems and clog critical infrastructure — had once again found their way to the river that is the backbone of Colorado and the Southwest’s water supply.

“We were all hoping against hope that it was an isolated incident,” said Tina Bergonzini, the general manager of the Grand Valley Water Users Association, based in Grand Junction, which manages a Mesa County irrigation system that relies on the Colorado River. “It is scary, from a water management standpoint, when you have something that could affect delivery and have ramifications for our entire community. It’s a scary thought.”

With the discovery of additional larvae this summer, the Colorado River from Glenwood Springs to the Utah border is now considered positive for zebra mussels. The river can shed that designation only once routine testing confirms a lack of zebra mussel larvae for five continuous years. CPW has beefed up its sampling and lab staff to catch any additional larvae — called veligers — quickly.

The invasive species destroys aquatic ecosystems, causes millions of dollars in damage to infrastructure like dams and irrigation pipes, and reproduces at an incredible rate.

Once established, experts said, zebra mussels are nearly impossible to eradicate.

David Strayer, a freshwater ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies who has studied mussels for decades, said he didn’t know of an example where zebra mussels were eradicated from a river system once adult populations had established themselves.

“They have the potential to radically change the ecosystem,” he said.

The spread of mussels

The threat of zebra mussels has always lurked over Colorado’s borders.

The mussels — about the size of a fingernail once mature — are native to Eastern Europe and first appeared in the United States in the Great Lakes in the 1980s. The species has since established itself in all of the Great Lakes, in all large eastern river systems and in 33 states. Just 150 miles east of the Colorado state line, Kansas’ Cedar Bluff Reservoir has hosted a zebra mussel infestation since 2016.

Quagga mussels — an equally destructive relative of the zebra mussel — have established populations downstream on the Colorado River in the system’s two major reservoirs: Lakes Powell and Mead.

Mussels and their larvae spread in two ways: By floating downstream or when they are transported by people from an infected body of water on boats, boots and bouys.

Veligers are microscopic and a single quart of water can contain hundreds, Strayer said. Each year, a mature female mussel can release up to one million eggs.

Federal and state agencies for decades have fought to keep the mussels from the West’s waterways, but the species has been detected in California, Utah and Colorado. The species failed to establish itself in Utah but survived in California.

In Colorado, CPW has detected veligers in Grand Lake and in Pueblo Reservoir, but the species did not establish sustained populations.

The state’s first adult mussel was found in 2022 in Highline Lake, northwest of Grand Junction. In 2023, CPW treated the lake with a pesticide, but mussels were found again a few months later. In 2024, the agency drained the lake completely to kill off the mussels.

But just weeks after the lake was refilled this spring and despite strict decontamination protocols for visitors, samplers found more mussels — and, for the first time, they also found some in neighboring Mack Mesa Lake.

CPW officials have not yet decided what the next steps are for the two lakes, said Robert Walters, CPW’s invasive species program manager.

The discovery of additional veligers in the Colorado River has prompted CPW to bulk up its sampling and testing staff. The agency dedicated a team of three technicians based in Grand Junction to sample the river and doubled the size of its Aquatic Nuisance Species laboratory so that samples could be processed more quickly. It also dedicated staff members from its Denver office to sample the river all the way from the Granby Dam to the mouth of Glenwood Canyon.

The river is now being tested weekly, as are two of its tributaries, the Eagle and Roaring Fork rivers.

At any given time, CPW could dedicate up to 12 staff members to zebra mussel detection, Walters said. In 2024, CPW collected 275 samples from the river for testing. Since mid-April this year, CPW has already collected 279 samples.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, too, is on high alert.

The federal agency owns irrigation canals in Mesa County and has increased testing in those systems, said Ethan Scott, the lands and recreation division manager from Reclamation’s Western Colorado Area Office.

“There’s definitely a concern that if they’re getting in our river, it won’t be hard for them to move to lakes and reservoirs from there,” he said.

Federal and state officials, as well as water managers and ecologists, are urging everyone who recreates or works in rivers and lakes to take steps to kill any mussel larvae that may be stuck on them or their equipment. They should drain, wash and dry all equipment and keep an eye out for adult mussels, which often have black and white stripes.

“If everyone is doing this, we have a pretty good chance of stopping this from spreading farther than it has,” Walters said.

‘Almost everything transformed’

Once established, zebra mussels filter huge quantities of plankton and other organic matter from the water — eliminating food sources for other species.

In New York’s Hudson River system, which Strayer studied, the invasive mussels filtered the river’s entire water supply every day, halved the amount of fish food available, shrank fish populations, reduced oxygen levels in the water, changed the river’s chemistry and decimated the native mussel population.

“Almost everything we measured about the river changed,” he said. “Almost everything transformed.”

Outside of mass ecological change, the mussels can wreak havoc on the valves, pumps and pipes that make up irrigation systems and dams. Adult mussels attach themselves to hard surfaces in incredible densities — up to 1,000 per square foot. They can constrict water flow in pipes and jam moving parts.

As general manager of the Grand Valley Water Users Association, Bergonzini is tasked with running an irrigation system that delivers water to 23,000 acres of land. That includes the Government Highline Canal, where CPW detected veligers last year.

Adult mussels could quickly and easily clog the irrigation system’s 150 miles of pipes as well as the smaller tubes farmers use to drip water directly on crops, like the region’s famed Palisade peaches. The pipes and tubes are meant to conserve water by replacing open ditches and reducing evaporation.

But they are an Achilles’ heel in a mussels infestation, Bergonzini said.

Adult mussels could also clog the association’s fish screen, which keeps fish — including endangered species — from getting trapped in the system’s canals, instead returning them to the river.

The association paid $80,000 to treat the entire system with an ionized copper solution at the end of the last irrigation season and will likely do so again, Bergonzini said

“It’s something that we’re going to have to work with our water users to raise the money for,” she said. “And that’s just for the prevention — it’ll be even more if we end up having adult populations and have to mitigate throughout the year.”

Similar treatment is not possible in the Colorado River itself. There’s just too much water, said Strayer, the ecologist.

“You would need a line of rail cars to dump the substance in the river,” he said.

Bergonzini urged Coloradans and visitors to be vigilant when they work or play in the state’s waters.

“There’s a mindset that they’re already here, but that’s incredibly short-sighted,” she said. “We all need to look at the communities and recreation we have — and realize that all of that could be affected by people’s unwillingness to help stop the spread of this invasive species.”

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The three new packs are the One Ear pack in Jackson County, the King Mountain pack in Routt County and the Three Creeks pack in Rio Blanco County, Colorado Parks and Wildlife says. The packs join the Copper Creek pack, which formed in 2024 and was the first in the state created by reintroduced wolves.

State officials are still trying to confirm the number of pups born this spring, said Eric Odell, the wolf conservation program manager, during a Thursday CPW Commission meeting. Odell did not provide a minimum number of pups observed from all of the packs, but he said at least four pups have been spotted with the King Mountain Pack.

(Watch on YouTube)

The agency has cameras placed near each pack’s den and continues to monitor them, he said.

“Pups are just inherently difficult to monitor this time of year,” Odell said. “They’re small and, up until now, have been tied close to the den in deep cover.”

An average wolf litter has between four and six pups — about half of which will survive the year, Odell said.

Pups from the King Mountain Pack were captured on game cameras deployed by CPW. A video from June 21 showed three of the pups playing in a forested area. The pups were likely born in April and are now likely weaned, Odell said, but are still too small to travel with their parents.

“This reproduction is really key — it’s a really key point in the restoration of wolves to the state,” he said. “Despite some things you might hear, not all aspects of wolf management have been a failure.”

Ranching groups for more than a year have criticized CPW and have alleged that prevention programs were not fully operational before the agency released the first round of reintroduced wolves. Coloradans in 2020 narrowly voted to restore the native canines, with many urban voters casting their ballots in favor of the effort and rural voters opposing it.

CPW released 10 wolves in December 2023 and 15 in January 2025.

Also during Thursday’s meeting, commissioners voted to pay two Grand County ranches a total of $197,712 for missing calves, decreased conception rates and one killed calf that were attributable to wolves.

The state will pay $100,045 to the Farrell Ranch for missing calves. That payment adds to a $287,407 payment approved by the commission in March for 15 livestock killed by wolves in spring 2024 as well as for lower conception rates and lower calf weights caused by the presence of wolves on the ranch.

The Coberly Creek Ranch will receive $97,667: $1,603 for a killed calf, $65,204 for decreased conception rates and $30,860 for missing cattle.

CPW recommended denying the Farrell Ranch claim and the Coberly Creek Ranch’s claim for missing animals, but the commission overrode the staff recommendation and voted to pay both ranches their full claims.

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Trout aren’t just found in Colorado’s rivers and lakes but are also a staple across a range of restaurants in a wide variety of forms, from a simple roasted whole fish over seasonal vegetables to decadently dressed-up plays on the savory dish.

“We felt as though putting trout on the menu fit into the dining culture in Colorado,” said Daniel Mangin, executive chef at American Elm in Denver’s West Highland neighborhood.

But most of the trout trotted out to Colorado diners don’t hail from Colorado, and they’re definitely not caught streamside with flies and ties. Instead, nearly all of it is raised on trout farms in Idaho and Iowa. Some even come from further afield, like an island off of Australia.

Guard and Grace, a modern steakhouse downtown, serves Tasmanian trout in a Thai coconut sauce with pickled chanterelle mushrooms and herbs.

Trout used to be a staple and a popular fish in restaurants in the 1970s and 80s, said Troy Guard, executive chef and owner of Guard and Grace. But many customers now want something more exotic, he said.

“Now I can get Tasmanian trout from Australia in a day,” he said. “I’ve always been one to try new things, and a lot of people have never had it before, so I wanted to do something different.”

But less exotic trout specimens still retain broad customer appeal, according to several chefs.

“If I were to take the trout off the menu, I’d have a number of people who would be very upset with me,” said Mangin of American Elm.

The neighborhood bistro’s dish centers around the classic trout almondine dish — a lightly fried filet with a crispy crust of crushed almonds. The trout is then paired with quinoa, pickled onions, garlic chili oil and vegetables. It’s a year-round staple at the restaurant, Mangin said.

Russ Fox, executive chef at Boulder’s River and Woods, has also found that the establishment’s roasted Rocky Mountain trout is consistently a top seller. It fits the restaurant’s goal to serve familiar comfort food with an elevated twist.

“River and Woods is what you would find if you were out foraging and in the woods looking for something to cook with,” Fox said.

Despite an abundance of wild trout — rainbow, brook and brown being some of the most common — in Colorado’s gold medal waters, restaurants looking to source trout locally don’t have a lot of options, the chefs said. River and Woods uses trout raised in Idaho while American Elm cooks steelhead trout from Iowa.

As far as he knows, Kermit Krantz is the only farmer raising trout in Colorado for commercial restaurant kitchens. His Frontier Trout Ranch in Saguache has supplied fish to some of the most high-end restaurants in Colorado, he said.

“We’re not a very big farm, but we try to compete,” he said.

Krantz bought the trout farm — a former fish hatchery — in 2013 and is rebuilding his small business after COVID-19 disrupted his customers’ livelihoods and his supply of fish food and trout eggs. He raises rainbow trout now, but hopes to again start selling golden trout and brook trout.

On any given day, tens of thousands of fish swim on Krantz’s farm. When it’s time to harvest, he euthanizes the fish by dunking them in an ice bath. Then he puts them on ice, hops in his truck and delivers them to his customers. “They can be on a plate in Denver that day,” he said.

Krantz sells 100 pounds of trout a week to Shavano, a new restaurant an hour north in Salida, he said.

Sourcing ingredients locally is important for Shavano’s owner, Robbie Balenger, and its chef, Jesse Rogers.

“We want our influence to come from around the world, but not our ingredients,” Balenger said.

Rogers modeled his trout dish after a meal he had last year while visiting Tulum, Mexico. He wanted to add a similar dish to Shavano’s menu, but only if he could source the fish locally.

“That dish in particular really sets us apart, to be able to have a fresh fish option here in the middle of the Rockies,” Balenger said.

Rogers butchers Krantz’s trout once it arrives and marinades it in a mixture of garlic, orange, lemon, vinegar, Dijon mustard and achiote — a spice common in Mexican and Caribbean cuisine. He then grills the fish and serves it whole.

The restaurant often sells out of the fish nearly every day, Balenger said. Some people started coming to eat earlier so they could be sure to get the dish.

“I’ve been humbled by the fact that people have taken to it so well,” Rogers said. “People are stoked.”

Coloradans interested in buying an EV shouldn’t wait, said Will Toor, the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.

“The next three months are going to be the best time in the next several years to buy an electric vehicle,” he said. “If you’re thinking about an EV, now’s the time to go get it.”

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have targeted for elimination policies that incentivize electric vehicle adoption. On the first day of his second term in January, he issued an executive order that reversed a goal from the Biden administration — that EVs make up half of all cars sold by 2030 — and pledged to implement other anti-EV policies.

The order called credits toward EV purchases “unfair subsidies” that distorted the market.

Colorado’s credit cuts will come not from a shift in policy but a budget crunch. State leaders want to put 1 million EVs on the road by 2030, but underwhelming revenue forecasts triggered a clause that will automatically halve some of the state’s tax credits, which were already set to decrease.

Here’s what Colorado EV buyers need to know.

How much will discounts decrease? And when?

Federal tax credits worth up to $7,500 for the purchase of a new electric vehicle will end on Oct. 1. A $4,000 credit for the purchase of a used vehicle will also end.

State tax credits for a new electric vehicle will decrease from $3,500 to $750 beginning Jan. 1.

That means purchasers of new electric vehicles will lose out on significant tax breaks from the two programs if they wait until next year to buy.

What’s happening to the federal credits?

Congress eliminated the federal tax credits when Republican lawmakers passed the budget reconciliation bill, which implemented Trump’s policy agenda. Trump signed the bill into law on July 4.

Lawmakers established the federal tax credits in 2022’s bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act. Under that law, they were set to expire at the end of 2032.

The move is part of a larger effort by Trump and Republican leadership to roll back climate action taken by the Biden administration. Trump has singled out electric vehicle policies specifically and made several other changes in that sector, including barring California from implementing a ban on the sale of gasoline vehicles and stricter vehicle emissions standards.

Eliminating the tax credits could reduce the share of new electric vehicles expected by 2030 from 48% of all new vehicle sales to 42%, according to an analysis by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. That share could decrease to 32% if the Trump administration were to implement other anti-electric vehicle policies also under consideration.

Why are state discounts decreasing?

Because the state budget is in trouble.

The state law that created the EV credits also included a mechanism that automatically halves the amount available if state revenue forecasts don’t reach certain benchmarks.

In June, state economists announced those benchmarks won’t be hit. Lawmakers will need to cut at least $700 million in spending from the next budget — an estimate that doesn’t account for hundreds of millions in new expected costs to the state caused by the federal reconciliation bill.

The new vehicle tax break was scheduled to decline from $3,500 to $1,500 next year, but the budget trouble means the drop will be even steeper — to half that reduced rate, totaling a three-quarters reduction from the current credit. State tax credits for other climate-friendly purchases — like heat pumps and electric bicycles — will also be halved due to the budget forecast.

The state EV program was designed to complement the federal one, Toor said. The federal policy limits qualifying vehicles to those that undergo final assembly in the U.S. The state policy was meant to ramp down as the domestic EV market strengthened and more models qualified for the federal credit.

“We did not anticipate the extreme action that has just been taken by Congress and President Trump to simply terminate the federal credit,” Toor said.

State officials are contemplating ways to continue incentivizing EV purchases, he said.

“The state budget is going to be extremely tight … so it’s probably pretty difficult to think about tapping into general fund revenue for additional EV incentives at this point,” he said.

What’s staying the same?

Two state incentive programs will remain the same.

Coloradans will still be able to claim $2,500 toward the purchase of an EV priced at less than $35,000.

A rebate for participants in Colorado’s vehicle exchange program will also remain. The program incentivizes income-qualified Coloradans to trade in old and heavily polluting vehicles for EVs. Those exchanging for a new vehicle can get a $6,000 point-of-sale rebate and those exchanging for a used EV can get $4,000.

Why is Colorado incentivizing EV purchases?

Gov. Jared Polis set a goal in 2019 of putting 940,000 EVs on the road by 2030 to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality.

Transportation is the top source of greenhouse gases in Colorado.

“It’s not the only strategy, but it’s probably the largest single thing we can do to reduce climate pollution from transportation,” Toor said.

How is that effort going?

As of May, Coloradans were driving 187,689 EVs — more than double the number on the road in 2023, according to the Colorado Energy Office.

Electric vehicles (including hybrids) represented 38% of all new car sales in Colorado in the first three months of 2025, according to a quarterly report from the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association. That’s up from 29% of all new car sales in the same quarter in 2024.

It’s hard to determine how much of that growth was fueled by tax incentives, Toor said. Other changes, like an expanded charging network, more available models and more familiarity with the technology, have also helped speed the transition to EVs, he said.

Colorado has one of the strongest markets in the country for EVs and offers one of the largest credits, he said.

“We certainly think that partially reflects the tax credits here in Colorado,” he said of the growth.

Correction: This story was corrected at 11 a.m. July 14 to better characterize the state’s vehicle exchange program. Eligible customers can receive up to $6,000 in a point-of-sale rebate. 

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The bill, ushered through Congress by Republican leadership and signed by Trump Friday, includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, slashes spending on Medicaid, and creates temporary tax deductions for overtime and tipped income. It includes $170 billion for immigrant detention and for new personnel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Planned Parenthood faces a prohibition on receiving Medicaid payments for a year. New parents can set up a new type of children’s savings account. The federal government will dramatically roll back clean energy tax credits — including those that help people buy electric vehicles — while expanding another credit for a certain kind of coal.

The tax breaks will translate to savings for most earners, with the largest benefits skewing toward the wealthiest residents.

The bill makes tax reductions passed during Trump’s first term permanent. But tens of thousands of people are at risk of losing Medicaid and food assistance in the next few years.

How Colorado’s members of Congress voted on the Trump tax bill — and what they’re saying

For Colorado, the bill means drastic changes to state finances that may require lawmakers to return to the Capitol in the coming months to deal with the fallout. State revenue is projected to fall by as much as $800 million by the end of its 2025 fiscal year.

"It’s going to be really hard," Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who sits on the legislature's Joint Budget Committee, said of the task facing policymakers. "We are going to have to come together and figure out what (to do). An $800 million cut to our revenue is enormous."

Here's a look at how the tax bill will impact Colorado in different ways.

For taxpayers

The bill institutes a variety of tax cuts. Some are permanent, while others are temporary.

On the permanent side, the bill enshrines current tax rates and brackets that were rejiggered under the first Trump administration, preventing an increase at year's end when those cuts were set to expire. It includes scores of business-related tax cuts, including allowing businesses to immediately write off 100% of the cost of equipment and research.

As for temporary reductions: The bill creates new tax deductions for tips, overtime and auto loans for the next four years. Workers can deduct up to $25,000 in tipped income on their taxes; up to $12,500 in overtime income; and $10,000 on loan interest for cars assembled in the United States, according to Fidelity.

For Colorado state tax purposes, the overtime provision applies only for the current tax year, Gov. Jared Polis' office said. Earlier this year, the legislature passed a law requiring the state to continue taxing that income, should the federal government shift gears, but it takes effect for the 2026 tax year.

The federal bill also creates a temporary $6,000 deduction each year for people 65 and older. That will also expire by tax year 2028.

For families, the bill increases the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200 for most taxpayers, and the bill creates a new children’s savings program, called Trump Accounts, with a potential $1,000 deposit from the Treasury.

In Colorado, taxpayers would get total tax cuts of more than $10.5 billion next year, according to estimates from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Those making between $59,700 and $103,000 a year would save about $1,760 in 2026 from the tax provisions of the bill.

According to the University of Pennsylvania, the lowest-earning American households would lose about $885 a year by 2030, largely because of cuts to Medicaid and food assistance. The top 10% of earners are set to receive roughly 80% of the bill's benefits, the school estimated, while noting those earners pay about 70% of federal taxes.

For state revenue

The tax bill doesn't just cut revenue for the federal government. Its passage means less money for the state, too.

For the remainder of this fiscal year, which began July 1, Colorado officials are projecting a loss of between $500 million and $800 million, Polis' office said Tuesday, and hundreds of millions of dollars each year after. Lawmakers already made $1.2 billion in cuts earlier this year to balance the current budget.

The changes to overtime taxation account for as much as $250 million in lost revenue projected this year for state income taxes. The other big slice comes from changes to business tax credits, particularly related to depreciation, Polis' office said.

The bill will also shift new costs onto the state, and those will soon strain the budget from the other direction. The new costs include implementing Medicaid work and eligibility requirements and an increased expense to the state for overseeing food assistance. Those changes go into effect in the coming years -- some of them after the 2026 midterm elections -- so they won't have an immediate impact.

But all told, they'll likely require more than $200 million in new, annual spending from the state.

As for this year, the longer the state waits to sort out this latest financial gap, the governor's office said, the harder it will be to fill. Since Colorado's fiscal year just started, each day means there is less money to cut or room to maneuver to make up for lost revenue.

That, in turn, raises the specter of yet another special legislative session that would be the third in three years, ahead of the next regular convening in January. The governor's office said Polis is still evaluating the bill's impacts.

Amabile said she was bracing for a special session -- and for the "painful" decisions it will bring.

"What scares me is that we are going to have to make some cuts," she said. "And the best way to make the cuts is to come together and decide what is it -- what are our priorities? What are the most important things? And what are the most efficient ways to achieve the things that we all agree need to be protected?

"What I already see happening is silos (of organizations and causes) starting, to want to protect their thing, without any other context."

For Medicaid

The tax bill includes more than $1 trillion in cuts to planned Medicaid spending through 2034 at the national level. Most Medicaid changes won’t take effect for more than a year, but the state may have to increase its spending before then to prepare.

Federal spending on Medicaid in Colorado will likely drop somewhere between $11 billion and $18 billion over 10 years, according to KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is a nonprofit that studies the health system. The state, which shares Medicaid costs with the federal government, hasn’t yet projected how its own spending will change. In the state's last fiscal year, total spending on Medicaid was about $15 billion, including federal contributions.

In some cases, such as when people no longer qualify for Medicaid, the state will spend less. In others, Colorado will have to decide whether to make up the lost federal dollars or make cuts to either services for recipients -- who include about one in four Coloradans -- or payments to providers.

Starting in January 2027, the state will have to verify that about 377,000 people in the Medicaid expansion population under the Affordable Care Act -- adults earning up to 138% of the poverty line, who don’t qualify for Medicaid for another reason -- either meet new work requirements or qualify for an exemption. That will put significantly more work on the state and on counties.

Many able-bodied recipients between ages 19 and 64 will have to show they worked, attended school or volunteered for 80 hours per month. Colorado will have to build infrastructure for people to report that information and to monitor their compliance.

In addition, recipients will have to go through the full eligibility process twice a year, instead of once. Colorado can complete that process automatically about three-quarters of the time, but when it can’t, recipients will have to fill out a 16-page packet to keep their coverage.

KFF estimated that 150,000 people in Colorado would become uninsured if the bill passed, and an additional 40,000 would lose coverage if enhanced ACA subsidies in insurance exchanges expire this year, as scheduled. It made those calculations before the Senate amended the bill, increasing the Medicaid cuts, so the projections are likely higher now.

21,000 undocumented Coloradans could lose Medicaid coverage under Trump tax bill

A clearer loss for the state budget is set to come in 2027. That's when the federal government will start reducing how much states can tax health care providers, such as hospitals. Colorado currently charges the maximum provider tax rate of 6%, but the threshold will drop by 0.5% per year, until it reaches 3.5%.

States use the money they collect from providers to claim federal matching funds, so reducing the tax has wider implications. The Colorado Hospital Association estimated the state could lose about $10 billion over 10 years, leaving less money available to compensate facilities that treat larger numbers of poor patients. The state also uses the money to pay its 10% share of costs to cover the Medicaid expansion population (those earning up to 138% of the poverty line).

For food assistance

The tax bill will slash food assistance -- the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP -- by $186 billion through 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's the biggest cut to the program since it began in 1939. It will do that by instituting new work requirements and by shifting new costs onto Colorado and other states.

Roughly 617,000 Coloradans, or more than 10% of the state's population, receive food assistance each month.

The program provides money for low-income people to buy food. In Colorado, a family of four with a maximum income of $62,400 a year qualifies. The benefits can be spent on a variety of foods but not alcohol, hot foods or other household items.

The bill will require the state to pay for more of SNAP's administrative costs -- about $50 million in new spending annually. It will also require Colorado and other states to start paying for some of the program's cost, depending on the scale of each state's error rate. In Colorado, that would mean as much as $140 million a year, according to the state Department of Human Services.

All of that translates to more Coloradans losing food assistance. According to the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 55,000 Coloradans are at risk of losing SNAP benefits because of new work requirements that expand on existing work rules in the program.

For climate and energy

When it comes to the environment and natural resources, the bill rescinds a vast swath of Biden-era investments in clean energy, ends tax credits for consumers who buy climate-friendly products, and undoes regulations and fees on oil and gas production. It also rescinds $267 million in Inflation Reduction Act money that's used to supplement National Park Service staffing.

The cuts reflect stark opposition from the majority of Republicans to many government efforts to address climate change.

The policy package will raise electricity costs for consumers, said Will Toor, the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office in the Polis administration. He called it a “remarkable act of national self-sabotage” that will allow China to lead the sector.

“We're talking about kneecapping advanced industries in the United States,” he said. “It's as if somebody was designing a bill to try to assure that the future belongs to other countries and that the United States will weaken its competitiveness in almost every advanced industry.”

Under the Biden administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, companies building wind and solar farms could qualify for tax breaks of up to 30% of costs. Those tax breaks now end after 2026 for projects that have not yet begun construction.

Susan Nedell, a senior advocate for the West for Environmental Entrepreneurs -- a nonpartisan group of climate-minded business leaders -- expects the cancellation of big projects in Colorado and nationwide, along with layoffs and fewer investments in solar and wind projects,

The bill also ends a swath of tax credits for consumers:

• Tax deductions for energy-efficient lighting and HVAC systems used in construction, expiring June 30, 2026.
• A tax credit for new homes that meet energy efficiency standards, expiring June 30, 2026.
• A credit for home renovations that improve efficiency, expiring Dec. 31.
• Tax incentives for geothermal heat pumps and other home efficiency products, expiring Dec. 31.

Federal tax credits of up to $7,500 for people buying new electric cars and a $4,000 credit for used cars will now end Sept. 30.

On Dec. 31, a federal tax credit for homeowners of up to 30% of the cost of installing rooftop solar systems will end.

A provision opposed by a broad coalition of Coloradans that would have mandated the sale of public lands was struck from the bill. But other changes remained that make it cheaper for oil and gas companies to use public lands.

The bill undoes the Biden administration’s increase in royalty rates for oil and gas leasing and rescinds mandatory royalty payments on methane produced on public lands by oil and gas companies. It also mandates quarterly lease sales for public lands in the West -- a change that eliminates agency and local discretion on whether land should be leased.

Industry leaders in the West applauded the bill, with Western Energy Alliance president Melissa Simpson saying it will “unleash the energy we need.”

The Associated Press and The New York Times contributed to this story.

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Cattle killings in Pitkin County this summer have spurred calls in recent weeks to remove the entire Copper Creek pack — comprising two adults, three yearlings and an unknown number of pups born this year — as a threat. Cattle killings connected to the pack already prompted Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials in May to kill one of the wolves born last year.

The controversy prompted a special meeting Monday of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission. Commissioners pressed CPW officials on their plan for handling the pack. But at the end of a nearly two-hour meeting, they did not make any official recommendations or policy changes.

The management plan created after voters in 2020 narrowly chose to reintroduce the apex predator delegates decisions about removing wolves from the wild to CPW, not the commission.

CPW officials said they would not yet remove the pack but were closely monitoring the collared canines — and had deployed range riders to help ward off wolves from herds.

“Setting aside the question over who’s to make the decision, we don’t think it’s necessary at this point to remove the pack,” CPW director Jeff Davis said at the meeting.

The Copper Creek pack formed in 2024 when two of the 10 wolves released in 2023 mated. The pair produced five pups, the first to be born in the reintroduction program.

But CPW removed the pack from the wild — except for one pup that evaded capture — and put them in a sanctuary after a series of depredations in Grand County last year. The pack’s patriarch died in captivity of wounds incurred while in the wild.

CPW in January then rereleased the mother wolf and four pups into Colorado’s central mountains, along with 15 wolves captured in Canada. One of the adult males from Canada in February joined the pack and mated with the female wolf. New pups were born in April, though CPW officials said they don’t yet know how many.

In May, CPW shot and killed one of the pack’s yearlings after it was connected to the killing of three head of cattle and injuries to three more across three Pitkin County ranches.

While cattle have been killed and injured since then, there have been no more incidents that CPW could definitively tie to the pack since the agency killed the yearling, said Matt Yamashita, CPW’s area wildlife manager, at the meeting Monday. Depredations are more difficult to investigate in the summer, when cattle are spread out on grazing allotments that span thousands of acres of rugged landscape, he said.

Davis, the agency head, acknowledged that “there has been continued conflict” between cattle and wolves in the area.

Ranchers in the pack’s vicinity have reported killings and injuries they believed were caused by wolves, Commissioner Tai Jacober said. One rancher said a wolf scattered his grazing herds on Friday, causing him to spend the weekend gathering them back up.

The continued conflict prompted three ranching groups — the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and the Holy Cross Cattlemen’s Association — to send a letter to CPW demanding the removal of the Copper Creek pack.

“The situation is unsustainable and has caused irreparable harm — to the credibility of the reintroduction effort, to the well-being of livestock and wolves alike, and to the ranching families who steward this landscape every day,” the July 3 letter states. “(The Holy Cross Cattlemen’s Association) joins in urging the immediate removal of the Copper Creek Pack.”

It’s unclear whether that would mean relocating the wolves or putting them down.

Several commissioners on Monday said they did not want to involve themselves in the day-to-day wildlife decisions handled by CPW, like how to manage depredating wolves.

The agency makes decisions every day on how to handle wildlife incidents like a moose charging at a person or a bear killing livestock, Commissioner Jay Tutchton said.

“I don’t see how this situation is any different,” he said. “I understand why we’re here, but I guess I disagree with the entire premise of this meeting.”

Davis said he met with two of the ranchers whose herds are being targeted by the Copper Creek pack. Both, he said, had been “busting their backsides” to coexist with the canines.

“They’ve been working with us to deploy non-lethals, they sat with us and shared their stories,” he said. “They’re looking for some solutions, they’re trying to hang on to hope. That’s something I take very seriously because that’s our pathway to success.”

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Negotiators from the seven river basin states said in a series of meetings in recent weeks that they were discussing a plan rooted in a concept that breaks from decades of management practice. Rather than basing water releases on reservoir levels, it would base the amount released from the system’s two major reservoirs on the amount of water flowing in the river. The new concept would be more responsive as river flows become more variable.

The comments signal a break in months of stalemate between the Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — and the three Lower Basin states: California, Nevada and Arizona. The states’ representatives are wrestling with a seemingly simple question: How should the river’s water be allocated as long-term drought and higher temperatures fueled by climate change decimate the amount of water available?

The Upper Basin states have argued that they have already borne the brunt of lower river flows. That’s because they rely on snowmelt and precipitation, since they are upstream of the system’s two major reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead.

The Lower Basin states — which sit below the reservoirs and rely on releases from them for their water supplies — have said they have already made major reductions in water use and that the Upper Basin states must also agree to cuts.

The new concept for managing the river reflects an attempt to account for the reality of the shrinking river and will, if adopted, adjust releases from the reservoirs based on the amount of water in the river.

“This is a very new thing,” Arizona’s negotiator, Tom Buschatzke, said of the idea at a June 17 meeting of the Arizona Reconsultation Committee. “It is focused on what the river provides and looking at ways to share that volume.”

The Colorado River system — relied upon by 40 million people — stands on the brink of system failure, Colorado’s negotiator, Becky Mitchell, said at a June 26 meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission.

“We also stand on the precipice of a major decision point — an opportunity point,” she said. “We have the responsibility and opportunity to do better if we collectively choose to do so.”

After years of talks, the states face a federal deadline to submit a plan early next year, with other decisions due sooner. Current rules dictating how the river is managed expire at the end of 2026.

What does the new concept look like?

The conceptual framework dictates that releases from Lakes Powell and Mead would be a percentage of a rolling three-year average of the river’s natural flow.

That’s a huge shift from previous management plans that called for releasing set quantities of water based on reservoir levels.

Using a percentage instead of a fixed volume would acknowledge that the amount of water in the river has shrunk significantly since 1922, when the states struck the original agreement over how to share the flows.

“The quantification of hydrologic shortage is incredibly important,” Mitchell said. “No amount of lawyering is going to fix the math problem … we must live with the river we have, not the river we want.”

What do people think of it?

“I think it has a lot of promise,” Anne Castle, a former assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Interior Department and a former chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission, said of the emerging concept.

“I think it responds directly to the hydrological situation that we’re in, where supply is shrinking and it’s also very volatile,” she said in an interview. “If you base allocations on a percentage of recent hydrology, I think that gets you closer to actually solving the problem of having a big gap in supply and demand in the Colorado River system.”

But the devil’s in the details, she warned.

The states, if they adopt the plan, will have to decide how to calculate the river’s natural flow — which is the amount of water that would be in the river without any human intervention. That number will serve as the base from which the percentage is derived.

Then they’ll have to decide exactly what that percentage should be.

Negotiators will also have to determine how to enforce the agreement if the Upper Basin is obligated to ensure a percentage of the river reaches the reservoirs but fails to do so, Castle said.

How long do states have to hammer out details?

Federal officials, for the first time last week, publicly announced a hard deadline for the negotiations.

The states need to tell the federal government by Nov. 11 if there will be a deal, said Scott Cameron, the acting assistant secretary for water and science at the Department of the Interior. Then the states would have until Feb. 14 to submit a detailed plan.

In the meantime, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will continue the monthslong process of analyzing other potential management plans, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Federal officials plan to analyze such a wide range of options that any plan submitted by the states would fit in that range, Cameron said last month at a conference in Boulder.

The bureau is on track to release a draft of that analysis by the end of the year — and a final plan by summer 2026, he said.

Even as negotiations have faltered at times, and tensions between the states have flared into the public eye, negotiators from the states have repeatedly pledged their commitment to finding a deal.

“We are dedicated to a consensus agreement,” Commissioner Estevan Lopez of New Mexico said. “Anything else is likely to lead to litigation … and that leads to years and years of uncertainty, and none of us will win in that context.”

How’s the river looking this year, anyway?

Not good.

The amount of water expected to flow into Lake Powell this year is 54% of the average from 1991 to 2020, according to the National Weather Service’s Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.

“This is one of the five driest years over the past 50 or 60 years,” Daniel Bunk, the office chief for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Boulder Canyon Operations Office, said at last month’s Arizona Reconsultation Committee meeting.

The most recent modeling by the Bureau of Reclamation shows that, in the worst-case scenario, Lake Powell’s water level could drop below the minimum power pool level by December 2026. If that were to happen, water would no longer be able to flow through Glen Canyon Dam’s hydroelectric infrastructure, which delivers power to seven states — including Colorado.

The most likely scenario isn’t good, either. If conditions continue as expected, the reservoir will not add any water to its supplies in the next year, and water levels are expected to decline over the next two years.

That’s especially troubling, since both Lake Mead and Lake Powell are only a third full now.

“Overall, we know we have a very significant gap between supply and demand, and we’ve been getting away with using more than nature’s supplies,” Castle said. “But the reservoirs are going down very quickly — especially this year. You can’t overspend your income on a permanent basis.”

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