Christmas in the Desert
In which I spend my morning observing the construction of a tumbleweed snowman: (We also made a video. Story coming in tomorrow’s newspaper, too. We take this shit seriously, and did I mention I have the best job? Ever?)
Archive of entries posted on November 2010
Rings of the Redwoods
Via Patricia McBroom, a fascinating look at a group studying tree rings in the redwoods along the Northern California coast for clues about climate: The plan is to chart the health of the trees over time and use laboratory analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes to figure out how the trees have reacted in the …
Earmarks and Western Water
As we enter a new era of U.S. fiscal austerity, in which some members of Congress push to foreswear the dreaded “earmark” (pork barrel funding), Kitty Felde points out the importance of the practice in western water development: In Congress, seniority is power. Senate historian Donald Ritchie says small states re-elect incumbents more often than …
It’s not as simple as just releasing more water from Lake Powell
When I was in Nevada last month, I heard from a number of lay people that the answer to a shrinking Lake Mead was simple: stop hoarding water upstream in Lake Powell. Henry Brean did a nice job today of explaining why it ain’t that simple – that the current lake levels (as of today …
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Using Marginal Water, Another Example
Related to my post the other day about the Drop 2 reservoir in southeastern California, and the increasing use of marginal (and frequently more expensive) water, Mike Hightower at Sandia Labs shared this graphic showing the expansion of wastewater reuse and desalination in the United States, current and projected:
River Beat: Weekly Report
So I appear to have jumped the gun last week in pronouncing the end of Lake Mead’s seasonal decline for 2010. As I write this morning, the lake surface is at 1081.92 feet above sea level, having fluttered below the 1082 mark during the past week for the first time since 1937. It’s now more …
River Beat: Drop 2 and the hunt for increasingly marginal water
Shaun McKinnon this morning has the good news that the new Drop 2 reservoir out along the All-American Canal in far southeast California doesn’t leak. Well, actually, the “doesn’t leak” part is not a big surprise, but provides a nice news peg for an update on why this tiny project matters: The $172 million project …
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Was Westlands Departure a Good Thing?
Two different California water writers have offered what works by way of an answer to my question about the meaning of Westlands’ departure from the Bay Delta Conservation Plan discussions. Not so much a collapse, as a perfectly reasonable shrinkage? The first voice is Patricia McBroom, who does a writerly job of taking us in …
California Bay-Delta – Doomed to Failure?
I claim no direct journalistic expertise in the California Bay-Delta water policy discussions currently underway. But in looking at it with my “institutional framework” hammer in hand (everything looks like a nail to me), it sure looks like a process doomed to failure. Take Mark Grossi’s latest in the Fresno Bee on Westlands’ decision to …
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Apparently I’m Supposed to Write a Blog Post About This
For more than a decade, I’ve written about arguments over whether the United States is building, or could, or should build “new” nuclear weapons. They are frequently silly arguments. The “newness” debate was engaged in earnest in the late 1990s when the weaponeers fielded a nuclear bomb called the “B61 Mod 11”. The B61 is …
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