Wow. Bruce Babbitt, former Arizona governor and Secretary of the Interior, has a striking op-ed in tomorrow’s Arizona Republic placing the blame for Arizona’s current Colorado River failures squarely on Pinal County farmers and the leadership of the Central Arizona Project. Ultimately the responsibility for approving Arizona’s part of the critical Colorado River Drought Contingency …
Sitting around on a Saturday night listening to WBGO and clearing out my inbox after being away most of the week. Here, from the solution space, a proposal from Arizona’s Colorado River Indian Tribes to help Arizona reduce its use of the river’s water. The CRIT have some of the bestest most senior Colorado River …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River DCP: “Arizona will figure it out, Episode III”’ »
Interesting letter from the Central Arizona Water Conservation District board leadership regarding Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan. Not sure what this means, seems kind of important. I guess we all need to set aside some time on Nov. 15 to find out. CAWCD Nov. 8, 2018 re Colorado River DCP (PDF) CAWCD Nov. 8, …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River DCP: “Arizona will figure it out, Episode II”’ »
At Colorado Mesa University’s Upper Colorado River Basin Water Forum this week in Grand Junction, a distinguished panel of the Colorado River Basin brain trust cheerfully dodged an audience question about what the basin states’ Plan B is if Arizona can’t come to the internal agreement needed to sign on to a Colorado River Drought …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan: “Arizona will figure it out.”’ »
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Last week’s cancellation of a key meeting in Arizona to work on the state’s plan to reduce its Colorado River water use was an “oh shit, what now?” moment. (Ian James’ story on the cancellation and the current state of the discussions here.) In the wake of the cancellation, there’s now a new letter, this …
Writing something new, I’ve been looking back at some stuff I wrote a few years ago about the Colorado River. The solution is, in a sense, straightforward. Everyone in the Colorado River Basin has to use less water. It’s possible to apply a simple arithmetic wave of the arm and say, for example, that we …
Continue reading ‘Whither the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan?’ »
Managing outdoor water use while maintaining urban tree cover is a key challenge for water managers in arid climates. Urban trees generate flows of ecosystem services in arid areas, but also require significant amounts of irrigation. In this paper, a bioeconomic-health model of trees and water use is developed to investigate management of an urban …
A new letter from Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Lewis to Arizona’s two top Colorado River negotiators complains that the latest version of the state’s plan to reduce its use of Lake Mead water would make things worse, in way that actual gives some Central Arizona farmers more water than they would get under …
tl;dr: A feud over how to implement Colorado River conservation adds another hurdle to final completion of the Colorado River Drought Conservation Plan. longer: While Colorado River Basin folks have been paying obsessive attention to Arizona’s struggle to come up with an internal agreement to cut back on its use of Colorado River, a second …