Archive of entries posted by jfleck

2015 puts Sierra Nevada-Colorado Basin linkage in stark relief

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If you care about Colorado River Basin water, it behooves you to pay attention to the snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada. It’s an entirely different watershed, but 2015 demonstrated how the interconnections in California’s plumbing have left the two inextricably linked. The tl;dr version of two interrelated points below: California’s drought has put pressure on the Colorado …

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Elephant Butte Reservoir, 2015

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Elephant Butte Reservoir, the largest on the Rio Grande, will end 2015 with roughly 322,000 acre feet of water, or about 16 percent full. That’s up from 11.5 percent last year at this time: Elephant Butte provides water, primarily for irrigation, for southern New Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico. When Elephant Butte is short, as …

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People on wells less likely to view water management as a shared problem

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This is fascinating: A survey finds correlations between utilizing an individual water source (e.g. well or spring) and attitudes toward water management and conservation. Compared to respondents with a shared water source, those with an individual source believe they are segregated from regional water concerns. They are less willing to pay for water management or …

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Sierra Madre, CA, introduces Colorado River water, winds up with “the Tucson problem”

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Water is just water, right? What happened when Sierra Madre, a suburb northeast of Los Angeles, switched from local groundwater to imported Colorado River water is a reminder that, well, no: In 2013, Sierra Madre was forced to begin importing water from the Metropolitan Water District. That led to a new problem. The water source …

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New Mexico forest restoration acreage rising

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New Mexico forest acreage cleared to protect the state’s watersheds and water supply tripled this year: The Rio Grande Water Fund was started in July 2014. In conjunction with its 45 investor partners, the water fund thinned 10,130 acres of forest during its first year. That’s up from an average of 3,000 acres per year …

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“More Slices Than Pie: Structural Deficit on the Colorado”

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I’m not sure who came up with the “More Slices than Pie” title for the panel discussion I moderated Thursday at the annual meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association, but it had a nice ring. A big thanks to Tom McCann from the Central Arizona Project for putting the panel together and inviting …

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