It ‘broke my heart’: Runner says conditions along Colorado River worse than thought

Mina Guli, an Australian ultrarunner and chief executive of the Thirst Foundation, described her recent trek along the Colorado River as both astonishing and heartbreaking. Speaking at a water‑policy summit in Las Vegas on Friday, Guli said, “It was an astonishing journey, but what I saw wholly broke my heart.” She added, “Again and again, I’ve seen conditions on this stream that are far worse than any headlines, far worse than what you’ve seen in newspapers or what you’ve seen in the media.” Guli began her roughly 1,800‑mile run in June to raise awareness of the river’s declining flow, a vital resource for the American West. During the run she observed green fields in the Rocky Mountains that locals recalled were blanketed in snowfall at the same time the previous year. Near Lake Powell, a waitress told her that boats once pulled directly up to the restaurant; now the water sits 175 feet below that point. Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager of resources for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, noted that resolving the river’s water shortage will demand equally tough measures. “The quality for everybody to stay connected to the Colorado River is going to be linked to doing truly hard things,” Pellegrino said. “And when we look at Mina’s journey down the river, I think it’s truly symbolic of that.” The run is a component of the “Keep the River Running” campaign, a partnership between Guli and her sponsor Grundfos, a pump manufacturing and water‑technology firm. Alongside the campaign, the “State of the Basin Report” was released, revealing that the Colorado River basin confronts an unprecedented structural water shortage fueled by a 26‑year mega‑drought and chronic overallocation. On July 31, the Trump administration issued a final environmental impact statement that could trigger steep water reductions for the Lower Colorado River Basin states of Nevada, California and Arizona. At the Las Vegas summit, Guli urged the states that depend on the river to abandon siloed thinking and collaborate on solutions. “This is not about an exercise of pointing fingers — it’s your job or it’s your problem,” she stated. “We need to start to admit that it’s our job and the only way to solve our job is for us to start moving together on solutions.” Other water experts echoed her call. Pellegrino highlighted Las Vegas’s conservation initiatives, describing the city as the nation’s most progressive water‑conservation community. Ansell Sims, president of Grundfos USA, argued that water scarcity has moved beyond an environmental concern. “When the system at large comes under pressure, however, the burden doesn’t stay in that riverbed,” Sims said. “It shows up in our budgets and in supply chains. It shows up in permitting and hiring plans. Water scarcity stopped being just an environmental issue a long time ago. It’s an economic issue.” For Guli, the summit represented a key step in turning hard data about the river’s plight into narratives that resonate with the public. “One of the critical things is to get everybody to recognize the scale and severity and the urgency of the situation we’re facing,” she said. “This is not a problem that can be kicked like a can down the road. There’s a problem right now, today, and it’s impacting people’s lives and the economics and the communities that depend on this river.” From Las Vegas, Guli plans to continue south along the river to the U.S.–Mexico border, then turn westward and finish her run at the Santa Monica Pier.