I’m not sure “Utah shouldn’t build that pipeline because California might need our water” sounds like a winning political argument, at least if you’re having the argument in Utah. I’m not saying it’s not accurate. Overdevelopment of Upper Colorado River Basin water right now clearly poses a risk of colliding with the Upper Basin’s obligation …
Continue reading ‘Utah and California, sharing a watershed’ »
No Endangered Species Act litigation required for this project on the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico: The Rio Grande is recovering some native vegetation with irrigation water typically used by farmers. The International Boundary and Water Commission oversees water treaties between the United States and Mexico. But lately the agency has invested in river …
Continue reading ‘What water sharing and collaboration can look like’ »
Not a big fire, or a bad fire, at least not yet. Until humans arrived in force to change things, fires were common in those mountains. It’s a fire-adapted ecosystem. We’ve got to get used to the smoke.
Laughlin, Nevada: The river is the focal point — and reason behind — the town’s existence. Without it there would be no casinos. During the summer months, the river is more of a factor in the Laughlin experience than at any other time of year. The all-too-easy-to-adopt thought that Laughlin is too hot in the …
Continue reading ‘The Colorado River is no one thing, episode XXVI’ »
Let’s revisit regulated deficit irrigation and the analysis Mike Cohen did last year of the problems and opportunities associated with forage crops in the Colorado River Basin, shall we? Golf and the Bellagio Fountain are easy targets. But if you’re not talking about alfalfa, you’re not being serious. Here’s Cohen et al.: Irrigated pasture and …
I love this bit of business from Charles Fishman’s visit to Angel Park, a Las Vegas golf course, in his book The Big Thirst: By the time a golfer steps up to the first tee, Angel Park has used 2,507 gallons of water to make that round of golf possible, 139 gallons of water for …
Grover’s talking here about raisins, but I think it generalizes.
Four years ago, I stood on Hoover Dam staring down at the receding water line as Lake Mead set what was, at the time, a record low: If you blow this picture up enough, you can probably see pixels of rock that have not been exposed since the 1930s. Or maybe not. The surface elevation …
In his new book Chasing Water, Brian Richter offers an interesting list of the ways in which water governance fails: Insufficient Financial Capacity If the government is not generating enough money from taxes or other means to meet these needs, or if the government simply is not allocating enough of its resources to the governing …