I’ve been avoiding wasting time on the “someone’s wrong on the Internet about California drought” genre – so much is being written that is so bad. But Elijah Wolfson’s Newsweek cover story (I won’t link, find it if you must) is so breathtakingly well-researched-and-written-ly bad that I’ll let it stand in for the genre: We’re …
Continue reading ‘Some breathtakingly bad California drought journalism’ »
Brett Walton’s annual U.S. municipal water rates survey is out. They show that, as post-World War II infrastructure nears the end of its useful lifespan, the cost of keeping things together is rising: Continuing a trend that reflects the disrepair and shows no sign of slowing, the price of residential water service in 30 major …
Continue reading ‘Santa Fe NM’s water rates are really high’ »
UCLA’s Jon Christensen* has written a lovely, loving essay remembering the late water historian Norris Hundley, who wrote so well about western water, and (Jon argues) is important now, in California’s time of need: It’s not for nothing that we often talk of western water wars. What Norris showed is that at times this looked …
Continue reading ‘A great water historian in California’s time of need’ »
A friend notes that I may have cut the best part from the “Cadillac Desert” quotation in this week’s California court decision on tiered municipal water rates. We hope there are future scientists, engineers, and legislators with the wisdom to envision and enact water plans to keep our beloved Cadillac Desert habitable. But that is …
Continue reading ‘One more money quote from the California court decision on tiered water pricing’ »
Despite some hilariously complex argument over the accounting details, there finally is enough water in Elephant Butte Reservoir on the Rio Grande that everybody agrees it’s now legal for the middle Rio Grande’s farm water agency to store some water behind upstream dams to help stretch out this summer’s irrigation season. The runoff forecast is still …
Continue reading ‘A glimmer of good water supply news for New Mexico’s middle Rio Grande farmers’ »
From yesterday’s landmark California court ruling on the legality of tiered municipal water rates (pdf): Southern California is a “semi-desert with a desert heart.”1 Visionary engineers and scientists have done a remarkable job of making our home habitable, and too many of us south of the Tehachapis never give a thought to its remarkable reclamation. …
Continue reading ‘Tiered water rates in the Cadillac Desert’ »
At the risk of nickel-and-diming you with bad forecast news, today’s Bureau of Reclamation mid-month report is bad forecast news. April-July flow into Lake Powell is now forecast to be just 3.4 million acre feet, 47 percent of average (pdf). That’s down from 3.75 maf (52 percent) just two weeks ago. Runoff for the full …
Continue reading ‘Lake Powell spring runoff forecast this year now less than half of average’ »
Crazy California’s proclivity for “governance by voter initiative” seems to have just undercut one of the major tools in the municipal water conservation kit. Tiered water rates, in which residents are charged a low rate for basic needs and increasingly higher rates for high usage, violate California law, according to a court ruling handed down …
Continue reading ‘In California, you can’t charge water hogs more than the rest of us’ »
This paper is measuring stuff in Australia, but seems to mimic the dropoff in runoff we’re seeing on the Rio Grande and other western U.S. rivers compared to the precipitation deficits we’re experiencing: Annual rainfall and runoff records from south-eastern Australia are used to examine whether interdecadal climate variability induces changes in hydrological behavior. We test …
Continue reading ‘Precipitation-runoff relationships in sustained drought’ »
What to make of this California drought story from Alex Breitler? Farmers within the Delta and farmers south of the Delta aren’t exactly bosom buddies. Not when it comes to water. But this spring, as their lawyers geared up for another year of fighting over limited supplies, farmers on both sides quietly started talking. They …
Continue reading ‘In California drought, when the water’s not fer fightin’ over’ »