Happy Holidays from the Bridge Boulevard bridge, Albuquerque, Dec. 7, 2024
The Sunday bike ride included a brief detour to check out the river. The Rio Grande was flowing at 1,700 cfs, the highest sustained flows of the year, as water managers move water downstream to meet their annual Rio Grande Compact accounting goals.
The “Happy Holidays” graffiti is, of course, there year ‘round. I love bridge abutment graffiti . Tough to photograph, but I love the lines and shadows, very Charles Sheeler but less clean and triumphant, people leaving their place-making marks.
1700 cfs, average diversion of PVID in the summer time from the Colorado. Two worlds.
Howdy from Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
Always enjoy your inputs about the Colorado basin and the management of same. As a Canadian Hydrologist, you may have read some of my input comparing the Colorado/California basin and the water issues that are governed by the Compact from a hundred years ago. We, here in Southern Alberta are a bit more modern, although we live in a basin that was considered a desert in the 1840’s and are slowly evolving from that ideology. Bottom line, we are encouraging more folks to inhabit the basin, but because of built in permits/promises from the last Century we are having water use issues. Anyway, I’d like to talk to you face to face a bout where do we go from here?
Thanks for listening
Dick
thanks for the reminder of the tragedy of moving water at the wrong time of year when that water provides no ecological benefit. if that water were moved in spring, it would do so much good. sad.
Thanks for reminding me of the tragedy of global warming and severe overuse of the Rio Grande’s severely diminished annual flows. Perhaps John will tell his audience the story of why the high flows are here now and what would have happened had federal agencies not stored this water to assure a full supply for the six Middle Rio Grande Pueblos’ prior and paramount water rights during the last hot dry summer.