Andrea Costillo in the weekend Fresno Bee: East Porterville’s poverty and education shortcomings stand out in a state analysis of communities with the highest health risks. The analysis from the California Environmental Protection Agency shows the town’s poverty level is among the highest 10% in the state. In education, the community ranks worse than 91% …
Continue reading ‘When the drought story is really a poverty story’ »
Before I went on the Children’s Hour this morning on KUNM (archived for now here, go to June 20, 9 a.m.), I looked at a few graphs. Here’s the first – Albuquerque precipitation since Oct. 1. It’s the accumulated precip on the Y axis, date on the x. The brown line is mean, the green …
In one of those wonderful emergent social media moments yesterday, a suggested reading list emerged on Twitter, hashtagged #CharlestonSyllabus. I have two personal contributions. I’ve written previously in this space about Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. It’s a powerful economic history arguing that America’s great …
For the second year in a row, New Mexico’s San Juan-Chama Project contractors (the biggest of which are the Albuquerque and Santa Fe metro areas) won’t get their full allocation of Colorado River Basin transboundary deliveries this year. But with the amazingly wet May and June, it could have been a whole lot worse. I’m …
Continue reading ‘San Juan-Chama project shortfall (trust me, it’s good news!)’ »
Your friendly reminder: don’t freak out when Lake Mead drops below surface elevation 1,075 in the next few days. We don’t have a Lower Colorado River Basin “shortage”* yet, and likely won’t have for a couple more years. What counts is the August forecast of the January 1 level. Mead is forecast to drop below …
Continue reading ‘Friendly reminder: don’t freak out when Lake Mead drops below 1,075’ »
Living near the ocean, in terms of water supply, is a blessing, but maybe an expensive one? The Santa Barbara, Calif., city council yesterday (Tues. 6/16/2015) voted to spend the $$$ to restart its old desalination project: The City Council agreed to spend $3.7 million in the design phase of the project. However, this is …
Continue reading ‘Santa Barbara starting back down desal path’ »
The University of Colorado’s Doug Kenney, who tends to be pessimistic about the Colorado River Basin’s water management problems, did find something optimistic to say in a Guardian op ed today: The situation isn’t hopeless. In Southern California, for example, the massive Imperial Irrigation District transfers water to drought-stricken communities in Los Angeles and San …
California, in the depths of drought, is pushing for a modest policy initiative that could help deal with the problem of poor rural communities running short of water. In the depth of New Mexico’s 2013 drought, I got really interested in the communities that were, and more importantly were not, running out of water. What …
Continue reading ‘One California policy response to rural water problems’ »
Our big wet May looks to have all but eliminated the possibility of a Lower Colorado River Basin shortage in 2016, and it now looks like a better than 50-50 chance we won’t have one in 2017 either, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s monthly outlook, published this afternoon (pdf). A shortage is triggered if …
Continue reading ‘Lower Colorado shortage now unlikely in 2016, maybe not in 2017’ »
Tony Davis asked Arizona officials if they had any actual evidence that California was trying to steal their water. Their official statement: “ADWR is not aware of any California efforts intended to take a portion of Arizona’s water supply directly. However, any changes to Colorado River operations could affect everyone who relies on the River. …