Anyone who flies in an airplane and doesn’t spend most of his time looking out the window wastes his money. – Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert My Southwest flight into Las Vegas was nearly empty (a rarity these days), so I had my choice of window seats on either side of the plane and the chance …
It snowed overnight in Albuquerque.
Total water use in Albuquerque for the first 11 months of 2015 is down 6 percent from the same period in 2014, according to the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority’s latest pumping and diversions report. Indoor use (as measured indirectly by comparing this year’s sewage treatment plant outfall to last year’s) is essentially unchanged, …
Fortunately, the L.A. Department of Water and Power has come a long way in the last 20 years. For a time, says McQuilken, managers balked at the idea that conservation and recycling could replace the Mono Basin losses. But since then, the utility has become one of the country’s most progressive. Take water conservation. Simple measures like …
A paper out yesterday adds new detail to the picture provided by satellite groundwater observations of the Colorado River Basin, arguing that groundwater depletions from human pumping are not as large as suggested by previous research. The paper, Hydrologic implications of GRACE satellite data in the Colorado River Basin published in Water Resources Research (behind paywall, sorry), …
Preparing to moderate a panel at next week’s Colorado River Water Users Association annual meeting, I’m struck by the mix of good news and bad news on the river. 2015 water use across some major user groups is at record lows for the modern era, something that I don’t think gets enough attention. But Lake …
Continue reading ‘Is the Colorado River Basin half empty, or half full?’ »
Jon Christensen makes a great point: Christensen says experts learned lessons about the “stickiness” of behaviour change during California’s drought. “When there’s a lot of messaging about conserving water, when there are incentives to conserve water, people do conserve water, they use less water,” Christensen says. “And when the drought is over there’s some rebound, …
Continue reading ‘the “stickiness” of drought conservation messaging’ »
Arizona cotton acreage this year is the lowest it has been in nearly a century. Cotton is incredibly important in the evolution of western water policy, in Arizona in particular and therefore in the Colorado River Basin in general. In Arizona, it was one of the “Three C’s” that dominated the state’s economy – cattle, …
With fall semester over yesterday, I called “faculty prerogative” and went out with Lissa for a weekday afternoon walk by the Rio Grande. I’m just an adjunct, but I’m trying to model the behaviors of my more distinguished university colleagues, and one of them is the rhythm of the academic calendar. Finals week is still …
Continue reading ‘The institutional hydrograph: New Mexico’s Rio Grande in December’ »
Just give ’em Rain. I don’t mean the stuff falling from the sky. I mean Cynthia Barnett’s natural and cultural history of the stuff falling from the sky. Terrific book, just made the list of finalists being considered for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Even if they’re not a water nerd, they’ll love it. …