It was a big year of change for the Nevada desert.

The title of the driest state in the nation comes with unique challenges — and innovative solutions, courtesy of hardworking scientists, policymakers and water managers.

And then there’s the gradual, year-to-year differences Nevadans may notice: rising temperatures in the nation’s two fastest-warming cities of Reno and Las Vegas, the decline of Lake Mead and the state’s groundwater aquifers, and more.

Looking ahead to this year and beyond, these are the environmental issues Nevadans should watch:

No solution in sight for Colorado River

By far, the most critical environment story that Las Vegas should be paying attention to is what happens as the seven Colorado River Basin states hash out a new structure of shortages.

It could mean more cuts to Nevada’s small allocation of the river as the larger system faces unprecedented megadrought.

At the Colorado River Water Users Conference in Las Vegas last month, the seven states appeared on a panel discussing a path forward but did not seem to be any closer to consensus than before. They have a hard Feb. 14 deadline from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to come to an agreement.

New water rights program, no funding

Throughout the Silver State, it’s hard to find a hydrological basin that the state’s top water regulator doesn’t consider “over-appropriated.” That means more rights to pump water exist on paper than are physically available each year.

Following the success of a popular pilot program, Gov. Joe Lombardo signed a bill to create a permanent program in which the state will pay people to surrender their water rights to the state.

But it didn’t include any money from the state budget for the program. A spokesman for the governor suggested the funding could come from the state later on, or that private donors could fund it.

Data centers descend on drought-stricken desert

A hot topic as of late is data centers. Questions abound about how they will source huge amounts of energy and water without causing a strain on existing supply.

Southern Nevada’s ban on evaporative cooling has spurred some innovation in the data center space, but a handful of water-intensive facilities were built before that was finalized.

All eyes are on city and county governments in the Reno area to see if they will adopt a similar measure as data center growth explodes at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center.

Trump era stuns solar growth

Under the Biden administration, Nevadans were bracing for unprecedented growth when it came to utility-scale solar farms, or the ones that are powerful enough to meaningfully contribute to city power grids.

That has come to a screeching halt as President Donald Trump has made an enemy of solar developers and his Interior Department has crafted policy changes aimed at stifling clean energy projects.

For instance, officials canceled the environmental review of a solar farm in Esmeralda County that was to rival the size of the city of Las Vegas, though it could move forward in a different form.

Both Lombardo, a Republican, and Nevada’s Democratic leaders in Congress wrote separate letters to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last year, deeply concerned about the state’s solar projects being abandoned or severely delayed.

Fight against mining in Amargosa River watershed

It’s been a multiyear saga as a politically purple coalition of environmentalists, Nye County officials and a Native American tribe fight to keep mining out of the sensitive Amargosa River watershed.

Most recently, the nonprofit Amargosa Conservancy sounded the alarm about the expansion of a clinoptilolite mine, which advocates say could alter the flow of groundwater and threaten a long-protected endangered plant.

Readers may remember that the coalition lobbied for a 20-year mining pause in and around Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, but that has largely stalled under a new federal administration focused on so-called “energy dominance.”

The coalition was successful, however, in defeating a lithium mine proposal near Amargosa Valley, as the mining company has rebranded and scrubbed the project from its public-facing website.

Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.