Archive of entries posted by jfleck

Why pumping water from the ocean to save the Salton Sea is a bad idea

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Brandon Loomis, in an excellent recent piece on the problems of the Salton Sea, quoted a resident along the troubled inland California lake who thinks the answer to its decline is straightforward: Rod Jeffries, a 64-year-old urban refugee from San Francisco, is confident the state will act…. His favored solution is to pipe seawater from …

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A quiet end to the water year on the Rio Grande

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Water year 2014-15 is ending with low flows again on the Rio Grande through central New Mexico. (We’ve only had one year since 2000 with above-average flows.) Lissa and I walked out to the Rio Grande in Bernalillo County’s far South Valley this afternoon. The water was low. Low is normal for this time of …

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Ken Salazar on California’s senior rights to Colorado River water

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From an interesting Sammy Roth interview with former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar: Q: In Southern California, water managers often say they don’t have to worry about losing access to Colorado River water, because of the state’s “senior” water rights. During an extreme shortage, they believe, Arizona and Nevada would lose much of their river water …

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The purpose of rivers

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The century just ended will be recognized as the time when America’s water resources were attacked with all of the sophistication and power that one would expect of an economic and technological superpower. Unruly rivers were straightened and channelized , massive levees and dikes were thrown in the way of encroaching water, cheap electricity was …

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thoughts on optimism in western water

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In which Sarah Tory interviews me for High Country News about stuff: When John Fleck began covering water (among other things) in 1995 for New Mexico’s Albuquerque Journal, he assumed he’d be writing stories about dried out wells and cracked mud. After all, as a Los Angeles native who grew up in a suburb that …

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Resilience, and pulling the cap on the new Las Vegas Lake Mead intake

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Southern Nevada Water Authority crews pulled the end cap off of the agency’s new, deeper Lake Mead intake today, and by this weekend they’ll be pumping water from the new system. This is a major milestone in a system that, when completed, provides critical water management breathing room for the entire Colorado River Basin. Theorists of …

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Met eyeing sewage recycling for Southern California supply

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Southern California water policy is looking like a game of speed chess right now. Amid the moves to supplement its Colorado River flow with extra water from Las Vegas and Imperial (agenda pdf), Met’s board also is considering spending money on cleaning up and reusing more of the sewage effluent Southern California currently dumps in …

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