By McKenzie Romero | Editor
A hotter summer. A drier winter. And an aggressive strategy from federal land management agencies to stamp out all fires — quickly.
The combination is fueling a fire season that has advocates sounding the alarm over firefighter safety, with six lives lost in Mountain West states in a matter of weeks.
In today’s Dispatch we break down the concerns being raised over wildland firefighting danger, plans for a new nuclear training hub in Brigham City, and Nevada’s lawsuit over Colorado River water restrictions.
“I’m pretty anxious about tragedies yet to happen, because we still have the same policy, blindly attacking all fires, instead of strategically, wisely managing and prioritizing fires.” — Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, who is awaiting details about a burnover incident that took the lives of four firefighters on the Utah-Colorado border.
Firefighters at the Widemouth 2 Fire manage hoses in a photo shared by fire officials on Aug. 14, 2026. (Photo courtesy of inter-agency fire officials via InciWeb)
By Annie Knox
Timothy Ingalsbee, an ecologist and former firefighter, said the full-suppression approach to wildfires reverses a longtime, science-backed strategy of allowing fires to burn in some further-removed areas to keep forests healthy, which also prevents crews from taking unnecessary risks.
He is waiting to learn to what extent that suppression policy informed a five-member Rifle helitack crew’s assignment battling the Gore and Knowles fires in southwest Colorado. Four members of the team died after fire overtook them, the deadliest such entrapment in the nation in over a decade.
Brigham City is pictured on Thursday, May 28, 2026. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
By Alixel Cabrera
Hi Tech Solutions, a nuclear power and energy services company that’s sponsoring a nuclear campus in Brigham City, signed a memorandum of understanding with the municipality and Utah State University to evaluate and plan a proposal for a “Center for Energy Research and Technology Campus,” or CERT.
The proposed center would be located adjacent to the Utah State University Brigham City campus and it is anticipated to offer “technical training, certification, and research and development center focused on nuclear energy, advanced energy systems, defense-related technologies, and associated supply chains.”
Nevada already has the smallest allocation of Colorado River water among the three Lower Basin states. (Lake Mead photo by Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current)
NEVADA CURRENT
By Jeniffer Solis
Nevada officials have filed the first lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s Colorado River plan, a plan that would require Nevada to cut water use by about 17% over the next two years and authorizes even larger cuts during dry years.
The lawsuit comes three days after the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released its 10-year plan for managing the Colorado River and the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, amid ongoing drought and record low water storage.
RECENT DISPATCHES
U.S. Supreme Court lifts pause on Trump mail-ballot order | Ashley Murray
Abortion could return to Supreme Court, this time with a focus on women’s health | Kelcie Moseley-Morris
National labs eye cybersecurity threats to smaller nuclear reactors | Alixel Cabrera
MORE UTAH NEWS
Thanks for reading Your Daily Dispatch. Did you know our weekend digest is also free? Sign up here. And if you enjoyed today’s edition, please forward to a friend. Increasing our readership helps us cover more news.