[T]he maximum discharge known outside the period of record was about 8500 m³sec¯¹ on July 7, 1884. According to E. C. LaRue (1925), during this flood, a resident of Lees Ferry rescued his cat from the branches of an apple tree. Decades later, the resident, with “the height of the water on the trunk of …
Continue reading ‘The Lee’s Ferry flood of record and the cat in the tree’ »
One of my new lectures this semester for UNM Water Resources Program students tackled the question of where and how you draw boundaries around a water management problem. The example I worked through was the Colorado River and the U.S.-Mexico border. You have water management institutions and governance that are largely separate on each side …
Continue reading ‘In western water management, the rest of us nervously watch California’ »
I once wrote a great deal about nuclear weapons. For more than two decades as a beat reporter at a daily newspaper in a state for which nuclear weapons was at times arguably the largest single business, it had a routine dailiness to it – what’s the budget for the new B61 mod 12? does …
Continue reading ‘Some thoughts on the death of Sid Drell and the seriousness of nuclear weapons’ »
LA Times on the eve of the release of the EIS on Sacramento Delta water diversion tunnels: Talks are ongoing over the Colorado River, where drought and increasing demand from Arizona and Nevada may reduce California’s share. If the tunnels are never built, the Met will need to drive a harder bargain on the Colorado to …
Continue reading ‘The Sacramento Delta-Colorado River connection’ »
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 …