The aptly named “Little Water,” on the Navajo Nation in northwest New Mexico. The weather station at Canyon de Chelly, which looks like it’s about 30 miles away across the border in Arizona, has recorded 1.52 inches (3.86 cm) of rain so far in 2014, which is less than half of mean precip through May …
In no part of the wide world is there a place where Nature had provided so perfectly for a stupendous achievement by means of irrigation as in that place where the Colorado River flows uselessly past the international desert. – William Smythe, Sunset Mangazine, 1900, quoted in Eric Boime, “Beating Plowshares into Swords”: The Colorado …
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Back from Mesa Verde and filing my pictures, there is this: More impressive to me, in some ways, than the big stuff. Eight centuries ago, some people went to a lot of trouble to climb up to that upper alcove and build a little wall. Maybe they built more. I don’t know.
NPR’s Dan Charles had a nice piece on California’s drought this week digging down a layer into how farmers are actually responding to California’s drought. They are: Fallowing fields of annual crops like corn to ensure they have enough water for their permanent crops, like almonds. Sarah Woolf takes me on a tour of her …
Continue reading ‘Water is different than other industrial raw materials, but how, and why?’ »
Kyle Mittan had some nice straight talk recently in the Tucson Weekly from the University of Arizona’s Sharon Megdal about Arizona’s projections that it’ll need another million acre feet per year of water by 2060: “A million acre-feet is a lot of water,” she said. “But is that the right number, or is that symbolic …
Inspired by these insanely cool California drought visualizations from Circle of Blue, here’s a drought history in New Mexico over the last 14 years:
Mule deer, in the grass outside the Far View cafeteria at Mesa Verde National Park. Is this nature? Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world’s leading questionnaire tool.
Simply put, no environmental law has had as much impact on western rivers–or created as much controversy–as section 7 of the ESA. – Reed Benson I’m on record as arguing that the Endangered Species Act is a terrible water management tool, while simultaneously being not terribly effective as an environmental tool. But you manage water …
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In Albuquerque, we frequently tear down our old Route 66 motels, but keep their signs:
The Desert Sun Motel is frozen at $19.95 a night (and up): CLEAN ARGE R OO MS $19/95& UP FREE COF EE CABLE TV HBO ESP VACANCY It looks like a project stalled in mid-renovation, though it’s hard to see how this could have ended well if the owners had continued to spend money. It’s …