Archive of entries posted by jfleck

Water policy innovation in Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Water Knife”

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Fiction can provide a useful framework for thinking through alternative approaches to real problems. In that regard, I’m enjoying Paolo Bacigalupi’s new novel The Water Knife. Set in the near future Colorado River Basin, the book makes water management seem genuinely exciting. I’ll avoid spoilers, but try to give some flavor. The opening scene involves the …

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Water in the desert: San Luis Valley, Colorado

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On my way home from Boulder Saturday, I diverted off the interstate and up over a low pass into the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, where the Rio Grande (or its Mexican name, the Río Bravo) starts its long, frequently interrupted journey to the sea. It’s a broad, flat, high desert valley, 7,500 feet …

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Arizona – a century of fear that California wants to steal its water

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In the fall of 1934, Arizona Gov. Benjamin Moeur dispatched the Arizona National Guard to the banks of the Colorado River near its junction with the Bill Williams to try to block efforts to build what would eventually become Parker Dam. Their fear: that the Colorado River Aqueduct, which would tap into the new reservoir, …

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As Lake Mead drops, who is really vulnerable?

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As Lake Mead drops toward a Lower Colorado River Basin shortage declaration, a group of UC Santa Barbara students have done an excellent analysis (pdf of their summary results) that shows where the real vulnerabilities are. They conclude that Las Vegas and the municipal areas of Central Arizona are on solid ground. Arizona farmers won’t …

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Friday in Boulder, I will be optimistic

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So this is happening Friday afternoon in Boulder, Colo., at the annual University of Colorado Martz Summer Conference of Water Law and Policy Nerds:    I’ll talk about social capital and adaptive capacity some, and try to make it clear that I was paying attention to the rest of the conference, but mostly I’ll just …

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Chandler builds a land use-water use widget

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Kathleen Ferris explaining the new ordinance in Chandler, Ariz., creating a linkage between land use and water use as the city builds out its last vacant acreage: Chandler’s new ordinance helps the city make decisions about land use and water use simultaneously. The new ordinance allots water to new businesses based on the square-footage and …

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Drought and media bias

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Tom Curwen has a great story in today’s Los Angeles Times of the sort that I’d like to see more of – beyond “OMG California is toast” drought coverage to look at what works in the state’s water management, what sort of adaptive capacity exists in the places where water is not running out. Which, …

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