Archive of entries posted by jfleck

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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Arizona goes all in on its Lower Colorado risk move

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Michael Wines of the New York Times joins the discussion as Arizona officials continue to push their new message about the risk of shortage on the lower Colorado: Although experts have been aware for years that shortages would eventually occur, the analysis represents a marked turnabout in officials’ thinking. “We’re dealing with a very serious …

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Arizona’s cry for Colorado River help: is “conservation before shortage” now a given?

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tl;dr The idea of conserving water before enforcing shortages in the Colorado River Lower Basin, rejected by water managers less than seven years ago, seems now to be all but a given, though much remains to be worked out. longer: Tony Davis has an excellent story in this morning’s Arizona Star on what looks from …

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California: a young state’s first drought, “an abundant crop of irrigation schemes”

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The state’s first protracted drought occurred in 1868 and lingered on until 1872 or 1873. The west side of the San Joaquin Valley suffered most. There the wheat crop was a total loss in 1870 and 1871, and by the fall of the latter year the parched valley had turned to dust…. [B]anks foreclosed on …

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Water in the desert, dying urban tree edition

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Is this what water conservation looks like? I’m not sure who got to decide that 10 inches of precipitation a year (25 cm) or less defines a “desert”, but by that standard my neighborhood barely slips under the line. In the 15 years that I’ve been collecting data, I’ve averaged 9.78 inches, and data from …

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