Archive of entries posted by jfleck

Colorado River history pic Sunday: If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it

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I love this picture. E.C. LaRue was a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist who in 1916 assembled the first attempt at a rigorous scientific survey of the water resources of the Colorado River Basin. Water Supply Paper No. 395 will never be mistaken for great literature. LaRue was one of America’s early technocrats, intellectual ancestors of …

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Lake Mead’s problem: It’s about the lower basin structural water deficit, not the Bellagio Fountain

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tl;dr Vegas is an easy target, but Lake Mead’s problems involve far more than Sin City’s profligacy. Longer version: As Lake Mead drops toward a record low some time next month, there’s a temptation to draw a dotted line to the Bellagio Fountain, 30 miles to the west, and point a finger of blame. It’s …

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In the West, what used to be snow, falling as rain

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If I was trying to manage water in California, these maps would give me the heebie-jeebies. It’s from a new paper (AGU-walled) by Zion Klos and colleagues extending our knowledge of the shift from snow to rain in the high country of the western United States as a result of warming temperatures. Here’s why this …

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The federal role in environment and water

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Reed Benson: I think the states, whatever their intentions, have the same trouble standing up to their politically powerful water users as they do their polluting industries. Federal oversight can help make sure the states don’t just serve their local interests at the expense of the environment, tribes, or downstream states. The entire post is …

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Steamboats and pickup trucks in the Colorado River

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A century and a half ago, there was enough water in the Yuma stretch of the Colorado River to sink a steamboat: On this date in 1854, the first steamer on the Colorado River, The Uncle Sam, sank at Pilot Knob. Today, it’s pickups, stuck in the sand: Yuma Station agents patrolling near the Colorado …

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South of the border, tension about highest and best use of Colorado River water

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Preparing a talk I’m giving next week about Minute 319, the Colorado River environmental pulse flow and its broader implications for western water management, I ran across this new piece by environmental journalist Cesar Angulo about the mixed feelings in Mexico about the effort: According to Arroyo Gonzalez, these reforestation projects have a very positive …

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