The sun is shining, the grass is green The orange and palm trees sway There’s never been such a day In Beverly Hills, LA But it’s December the 24th And I’m longing to be up north – Irving Berlin The backyard of my childhood home, in the foothills above Upland, California, was a remnant of …
“Decoupling” – when resource use is no longer inextricably linked to population or economic growth – is a central feature of water management right now in the western United States. (See here for a deeper dive.) The LA Times’ Bettina Boxall had a great story over the weekend that illustrates its impact on a proposal …
Continue reading ‘conservation undercuts the desalination business model’ »
tl;dr There won’t be a grand bargain to reduce Colorado River water use before next month’s inauguration. But that doesn’t mean the grand bargain is dead. In fact, it is inevitable. longer…. LAS VEGAS – When Jeff Kightlinger said during a public session yesterday at the Colorado River Water Users Association that a long-awaited deal to …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River deal – not there yet, but close, and probably inevitable’ »
“We are not going to get the Drought Contingency Plan completed.” That was the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s Jeff Kightlinger this morning during the opening panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting in Las Vegas. It was a very public expression of something that has been increasingly clear in recent weeks …
With the Colorado River water management community converging on Las Vegas this week, we are likely to learn more about whether or when we’ll see a deal on the long-awaited “Drought Contingency Plan” to reduce Lower Basin use of water from Lake Mead. Under the DCP, which has been in nearly final form for the …
Continue reading ‘How Arizona plans to help reduce the pressure on Lake Mead’ »
Comments from an interesting workshop in Tel Aviv: Rather than cling to an “all or nothing” peace process, the international community should promote smaller advancements in areas such as water, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the European Union’s ambassador to Israel said at seminar in Tel Aviv on Thursday. “We’ve spent too much time promoting an Israeli-Palestinian solution …
When I was writing my book, I wanted to talk about water use in cities through the story of a single city, and I chose Las Vegas (Nevada, not the one in New Mexico) intentionally as a rhetorical device. One of the writer’s tricks is to start readers on familiar terrain and lead them to …
I’ve seen this more than once: Fifteen percent of all U.S. crops are grown with irrigation water that originates in the Colorado River Basin. That’s from an Alternet piece, and it’s a number I’ve seen repeated many times (see here, here, here for just a few of the many examples). I am skeptical. I’ve been unable …
Continue reading ‘Is Colorado River water responsible for 15 percent of U.S. crops?’ »