Last night, I shared Part I of an interesting discussion by Arizona water managers of the risk facing Lake Mead and Lower Colorado River Basin water users in Nevada, Arizona and California: Absent some big wet years or management intervention, Lake Mead could drop to levels in the next five to eight years that would …
Continue reading ‘What it will take to fix Lake Mead – the Arizona suggestion’ »
From the morning newspaper, a column about the assumption embedded in Albuquerque’s water utility budget – that Albuquerque water conservation has hit bottom: [T]he Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority’s latest spending plan bets you’ve finally hit the conservation wall, projecting that from the current 134 gallons per person per day, you’ll go up to …
update: see also Part II, discussing Arizona’s suggestion regarding what it might take to fix this problem Absent some big wet years or management intervention, Lake Mead could drop to levels in the next five to eight years that would make it nearly unusable – especially for power generation and water for Las Vegas, but …
In 2012 cattle, calves and dairy made up 78.6 percent of New Mexico’s farm receipts. Hay to feed them was the next-largest component of the state’s ag economy at 4.3 percent. Pecans were next at 2.7 percent, and our famous chile made up 1.6 percent of farm receipts. Source: USDA ERS In the background, you …
It seems like a no brainer. Stop wasting that water! Put it to good use! But when we’re talking about things like lining irrigation canals (see for exmample the All-American Canal saga, pdf here) or cleaning up and re-using sewage, it’s critical to ask the question: If we don’t do this, where will that water …
Continue reading ‘The L.A. River – when “wasted” water isn’t wasted’ »
As you exit the pedestrian gate at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing at Algodones, you find dentistry, a pharmacy and cheap liquor. In other words, the international line created a sharp gradient, over which money from Northside accordingly spilled; and Mexicans came from all over Southside to be nourished by that money. – William T. Vollman, …
Phoenix is following a pattern I’ve frequently noted here – water conservation is, at least for now, outpacing population growth: Research by Phoenix’s Water Service Department shows 1.5 million people lived in Phoenix in 2013, and about 375,000 homeowners had city water accounts. In 1998, about 1.2 million called Phoenix home, and 301,475 had water …
We have revolutionized our concept of what western water is. It is no longer simply a commodity to be removed from a watercourse for use on farmland or in a factory. There is life and beauty in water. It is a valid use of water simply to allow it to remain in a stream or …
After spending the day reading about the federal government’s, shall we say, persuasive role in assisting Imperial Valley farmers that it was in their best interests to figure out a way to share a bit of their water across San Gorgonio Pass with the city folk to their west, I this evening ran across this: …
Continue reading ‘In western water, what’s the right role for the feds?’ »
Pollution control efforts seem to be working on Britain’s urban rivers: Britain’s urban rivers are the cleanest they have been for more than two decades, a study has found. More than 2,300 river sites in England and Wales were analysed between 1991 and 2011 by Cardiff University. They examined the presence and spread of 78 …
Continue reading ‘In British rivers, pollution control seems to be working’ »