My UNM faculty colleague Caroline Scruggs and soon-to-be-graduate of both Community and Regional Planning and the Water Resources Program Jason Herman have a new paper on the costs of treating and reusing wastewater. Caroline and her students have been looking closely at the issue in the context of small inland communities, which are increasingly eyeing both …
Continue reading ‘Costs, benefits of direct and indirect potable reuse’ »
From the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association on the question of who speaks for Arizona on Colorado River issues: View note
The feud within Arizona over who’s in charge of the state’s Colorado River water – the state Department of Water Resources or the Central Arizona Water Conservation District – escalated this week. This is from an April 25 “cease and desist” letter (obtained by me through a state public records act request) from the Arizona …
Continue reading ‘who’s in charge of Arizona’s Colorado River water?’ »
78.33 percent of the United States is in “not drought or abnormally dry” conditions in this week’s Drought Monitor. That’s the best we’ve seen since June 2010. In writing this note, I am reminded of the linguistic dilemma posed by our lack of a good word for “not drought”.
Amid the Colorado River water management attention last week rightly focused on the fact that a wet winter in the Upper Basin means a big release this year from Lake Powell to help refill Lake Mead, I missed another bit of business that may be even more important. The Bureau of Reclamation’s planning model is …
Continue reading ‘declining Lower Colorado River Basin water use’ »
Lovely Felicity Barringer piece on our language of water. My favorite bit: In a bone-dry landscape like the Navajo reservation at the corner of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, water names proliferated. Places like Tohatchi and Toadlena, New Mexico or Tonolea, and Tolani Lakes, Arizona, begin with tó, the Navajo word for water.
Riding my bike late this morning, I stopped to admire a roadrunner in the trail. As you can see from the picture, it’s a ratty bit of trail (Gritty? We have more words for the sublime than the mundane.) flanked by the freeway to the north and a treeline to the south bordering old farm …
My friend and collaborator Becky Bixby, a University of New Mexico biologist and the associate director of our Water Resources Program (she is our program’s science brain), on why she wasn’t at the March For Science yesterday: UNM’s Becky Bixby won’t be at the march. But that’s only because since the beginning of the semester, …
I’m moving out of my policy wonk comfort zone this morning, talking about The River in some new ways, about some new work I’ve been doing. It will be livestreamed, 9 a.m. MT:
Dan Elliott has details on yesterday’s USBR announcement of a 9 million acre foot release from Lake Mead: The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages dams and reservoirs on the Colorado River, said it will release 9 million acre-feet from Lake Powell, sending it down the Colorado into Lake Mead, where it will be tapped by …
Continue reading ‘Bonus water for Lake Mead, with the chance for more next year’ »