Archive of entries posted by jfleck

Preliminary Rio Grande runoff: 55 percent through Central New Mexico

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update: The preliminary human-in-the-loop forecast is substantially better than the automated one, at 55 percent. But still terrible. previously: The preliminary Rio Grande forecast for April 1 is just 33 percent of the 1981-2000 average, a dramatic reduction since the March 1 forecast that shows just how abysmally warm and dry the month of March …

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Some difficulties in setting up water markets

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Water markets – willing buyers and willing sellers, to get water moved from places with a lot to places that need it really bad – are a hot topic of conversation right now, what with California’s big drought and all. Brian Devine at the University of Colorado has a nice post up this week explaining …

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Colorado River Basin forecast: where’d that 1.3 million acre feet go?

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The April-July runoff forecast into Lake Powell, on the Arizona-Utah border, is just 52 percent of the long term mean, according to new numbers out today from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center. That is roughly 1.3 million acre feet less water flowing into Lake Powell than the forecast of just a month ago, the …

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California drought: Jerry Brown doesn’t have a knob to turn

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Yesterday’s executive order from California Gov. Jerry Brown (pdf here) illustrates a crucial issue about water governance, the issue of the scale at which we manage our water. The headline news from Brown’s announcement – “First Ever Statewide Mandatory Water Reductions.” But what does “mandatory” mean here? Here’s the explanation from Craig Miller, who’s covering California …

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Where will California’s water shortfalls hit?

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Craig Miller at KQED has a useful roundup of what sort of shortfalls California water users might see this summer as a result of drought: Ag: “More than 400,000 acres of farmland were fallowed last year because of scarce water. Credible sources have estimated that figure could double this year.” That’s in the neighborhood of …

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Corn, cotton, hay, rice all down: how California farmers are responding to drought

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California farmers by now have a pretty clear picture of what their water supply situation is going to be this year, whether it’s reservoir and irrigation system surface delivery, or groundwater pumping. The U.S. Department of Agriculture today released projected acreage for the state’s major field crops (pdf) that reflects farmers’ resulting choices: corn: 430,000 …

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Keep breathing, California. You can do this.

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A year ago, I wrote a piece urging calm in the face of California’s extreme drought: The thing to remember – and this’ll help you get through the tough year ahead – is that drought is no one big thing. It’s a series of little things – one water user, one water system at a time. …

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San Juan-Chama forecast: looks like a second year of shortfall

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According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, warm February weather meant the earliest runoff in the 40-plus year history of the San Juan-Chama Project, which brings water from southern Colorado to the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. But “early” does not translate to “a lot of water”. San Juan-Chama Project contractors, the largest of …

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Exaggerated Impacts of Unrealistic Water Shortages

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A guest post of sorts* from a group of prominent economists here in the western United States questioning the findings in a widely quoted report (pdf here) by a group from Arizona State about the potential economic impact if the Colorado River went dry: *********** A January 14th article in the Wall Street Journal reported …

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