Preliminary year-end modeling suggests New Mexico is in good shape to meet its obligations to deliver water to Texas under the Rio Grande Compact in 2018, according to data presented Thursday by the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission to the executive committee of the Middle Rio Grande Endangered Species Collaborative Program. In a counter-intuitive twist, …
This is a big deal: Citing concerns about costs to individual farmers, Westlands Water District’s board of directors voted 7-1 against participating in the project, known officially as California WaterFix. Westlands is the first major water agency to vote on the project, and other big districts are expected to make their decisions in the coming …
Continue reading ‘Westlands California water tunnels “no” could be “fatal blow”’ »
One of the great insights from my University of New Mexico colleague Bob Berrens, chair of the economics department and my predecessor as director of UNM’s Water Resources Program, is the importance of disaggregating agriculture. Much water policy discussion, rightly, revolves around the agriculture-municipal distinction. With ag getting (and needing) a much larger share of …
The tamarisk beetle, introduced a decade ago to try to beat back an invasive tree clogging western rivers, has not saved as much water as hoped, according to new research by a team led by the USGS’s Pamela Nagler. Nagler and her colleagues used satellite data to estimate tamarisk water use before and after the …
Continue reading ‘Tamarisk beetle die-off not saving as much water as expected’ »
If I’m to make any useful contribution in these waning years of my career as a professional water wonk, it is trying to make this point: John Fleck, director of the Water Resources Program at the University of New Mexico, said there is no clear need for the water – not now or in the foreseeable future. “Growth …
One of California’s largest Colorado River farm water districts is suing the state’s largest municipal water agency, charging that efforts to move farm water to cities are threatening the viability of agriculture in one of the oldest farming valleys on the river. The Palo Verde Irrigation District, in a suit filed last month in Riverside …
From Jill Robbie at the University of Glasgow, a nice explanation of David Schorr’s revisionist account of the evolution of the “doctrine of prior appropriation” in western water law: For some law and economics scholars, the evolution of the prior appropriation doctrine is explained due to the high value of water in the dry climate …
Continue reading ‘Was prior appropriation really about distributive justice?’ »
The stretch of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque where we worry most about flood risk is called the “Montaño Gap”, a couple of miles on the west side of the river in the center of town where a school, some homes, and businesses are located in lowlands with essentially no levee protection. There was an …
Continue reading ‘Flood risk is about where you build stuff’ »
Three interesting visuals for a Friday morning to help illustrate New Mexico’s improving water situation, with caveats. One For this first time since the federal Drought Monitor began operations in January 2000, New Mexico is completely free of drought or unusually dry conditions. Our map is clear: This is excellent news, as Olivier Uyttebrouck noted …
Continue reading ‘Some notes on New Mexico’s improving water situation’ »
In 1940, Los Angeles County had 250,000 acres of harvested cropland. By the end of World War II LA County was, by far, the most agriculturally productive county in California. In the most recent Census of Agriculture, conducted in 2012, acreage had declined to just 40,000 acres and LA County was but a minor contributor …