The Bureau of Reclamation’s announcement at Monday’s meeting of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District that it is halting work on El Vado Dam repairs raises hugely consequential questions about water management in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley. The short explanation for the halt is that the current approach to repairing the 1930s-era dam …
Alert Inkstain reader John correctly questions the impression left by the log scale I used last time ’round in my graph of flow at Otowi: [W]hile I appreciate the usefulness of logarithmic scales for being able to discern patterns at the low end of the flow range, it does somewhat hide the magnitude of the …
It is telling that I got excited when I noticed inflow into New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley approaching “normal”, which I now define as the median of 21st century flow. Our climate-altered world, y’all. A note on the evolution of the graph: I’ve added the “max” and “min” lines back. I dropped them because …
Inspired by Jack Schmidt’s monthly “how much water is in Colorado River storage” posts (see here for last month’s), I’ve been playing with a similar tool to help me think about the status of our reservoirs on the Rio Grande system here in New Mexico. The graph above helps me with two important intuitions about …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s Rio Grande reservoirs: Running on Empty’ »
Daniel Rothberg wrote this week about an important case in Nevada that is testing the boundaries of the question of tribal sovereignty: The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe filed a formal motion earlier this month to intervene in a federal regulatory proceeding that could eventually pave the way for a pumped storage hydropower project on the …
Continue reading ‘Tribal sovereignty and pumped storage hydropower in Nevada’ »
A guest post from my Utton Center colleague and Colorado River research collaborator Rin Tara, staff attorney and water policy and governance analyst at the Utton Center, University of New Mexico School of Law. By Rin Tara Over the last year, I had the joy of working with John on a law review article …
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments tomorrow (Wed. March 20, 2024) about the fate of ongoing litigation between Texas and New Mexico about how to share the waters of the Rio Grande. The two states (Colorado is technically a party two, but this is really Texas v. New Mexico) have what they think …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s Rio Grande, at the U.S. Supreme Court’ »
Despite the Sturm und Drang of last week’s competing proposals to the federal government for managing drought and climate change on the Colorado River, there’s a lot to be hopeful about. On their faces, the Upper Basin and Lower Basin proposals have a lot of “Water’s for fighting over after all!” vibe. But if you …
Continue reading ‘Counseling patience on the current Colorado River kerfuffles’ »
A guest post from Jack Schmidt, crossposted from Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies By Jack Schmidt | March 8, 2024 Reservoir storage didn’t change much in February 2024, demonstrating that the Basin’s water managers and users have succeeded in retaining the bounty of last year’s big runoff. This month’s assessment of Colorado …
Continue reading ‘Holding Course: February brings more of the same for basin storage’ »
Six days later, Lázaro Quintana, the mayordomo, opened the headgate and sent the first water of the new season down the five-mile long ditch, empty since the November before. When the brown water finally arrived four hours later at the bridge, the tip of its foamy tongue was bearing along a small plum branch that …
Continue reading ‘Stanley Crawford on the first water of spring’ »