My friends at the Middle Rio Grande Water Assembly are gathering Sat., March 21, to discuss strategies for managing water in the face of climate change in the central New Mexico reach of the river: While there is a Regional Water Plan for the three county-area (Sandoval, Bernalillo and Valencia), it is ten years old. …
Continue reading ‘Strategies for Middle Rio Grande water, March 21’ »
I’m fascinated by the geomorphic traces left by the rise and fall of Lake Mead – human scale (egret scale?) shoreline terraces. This is on the northern bank above Boulder Harbor. The bird, shown for scale (I don’t have a rock hammer, it’s a great egret, so quite large), hangs out there because of the …
One of the members of my brain trust was speculating idly the other day about how different the Colorado River dialogue might be if the hydro-geo-chemistry of the bathtub ring was different – if the dropping water didn’t leave a white mark, letting you see how much Lake Mead has dropped, letting people like me …
update, Thursday, 3/5: Final March 1 forecast numbers are in, unchanged for those in the preliminary quoted below. previously: It says something about the drought on New Mexico’s Rio Grande in recent years that a forecast of 67 percent of average runoff into Elephant Butte Reservoir is good news. That’s the mid-point of the preliminary …
Continue reading ‘Rio Grande forecast improves, but that’s not saying much’ »
The latest edition of Inkstain’s infrequent* Ask Me a Colorado River Question feature comes via Paolo Bacigalupi, and it wasn’t quite phrased as a question, but I’m hoping to resurrect the feature. I’ve always said “cap” for CAP and “snee-wah” for SNWA. But I have no idea why. Odd and embarrassing. @jfleck @waterwired @jonnypeace — Paolo …
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From Gary Woodard’s work – in Arizona… an annual drop in per-household demand of more than 2 percent between 2000 and 2013 across Maricopa and Pima counties. This trend is expected to extend through 2020, as we continue to replace appliances, fixtures, and landscape plants with new, more water-efficient ones; construct new, more water-efficient homes; and participate in water …
Continue reading ‘How low can municipal water conservation go?’ »
I took a lot of pictures on my recent trip. This is one of them.
With a dry February, the chances of a big snowpack and “bonus water” flow in 2015 that might begin to refill Lake Mead and Lake Powell are just about gone. April-July runoff into Lake Powell, the big reservoir in the Colorado River’s “Upper Basin”, is forecast to be 71 percent of average, according to the …
Continue reading ‘April-July Colorado River runoff: 71 percent’ »
It is testimony to a lousy January and most of February that the spectacular snowstorm I drove home into over the weekend left the key watersheds that provide water to the Rio Grande and Colorado River still behind average for the year. The 9 inches of snow at my house was the most since December …
Continue reading ‘West’s snowpack improves, still not great’ »
The folks at Colorado Mesa University have sent ’round their call for abstracts (pdf) for this fall’s Upper Colorado River Basin Water Forum: (Disclosure: I’m on the forum planning advisory committee.)