The Bougainvillea is justly classed among the most showy of our climbers and when planted beside a veranda or when allowed to climb on a tall tree or building gives gorgeous effects. – Gardening in California: Landscape and Flower, by John McLaren, 1914
Also from this morning’s paper, a tougher stance from the New Mexico Environment Department on progress (or lack thereof) in cleaning up a massive groundwater mess beneath Kirtland Air Force Base and adjacent Albuquerque neighborhoods: The letter provided to the Journal is an expression of increasing Environment Department frustration with the cleanup progress. A month …
From this morning’s paper, a visit to Embudo, where stream U.S. stream flow measurement began: In the world of U.S. water management, this narrow strip where the river funnels between high bluffs is historic. Powell, most famous as the first person to survey the Grand Canyon, had realized that the ambitions of the continent’s European …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Embudo and the history of measuring water’ »
The perception of many residents that the drought gravely threatened their pocketbook and way of life was more often than not an exaggeration. Such irrational reactions were in part driven by the media’s coverage of the drought. Water, usually taken for granted and ignored, became their lead story as the drought continued. Video from helicopters …
Continue reading ‘How the media gets drought coverage wrong’ »
When Daniel Trembley MacDougal of the New York Botanical Garden rode a flood pulse through the Colorado River Delta in 1905, he found a puzzling landscape – one of the most arid regions of North America sliced through by “swampy jungles”. At a time when beaver was being trapped into oblivion elsewhere, it was a …
I wasn’t close enough to hear what they were talking about, but the turtle looked pissed.
One of the fundamental propositions of date culture is that the palm requires a large supply of water for irrigation. This rule is apparently subject to some striking exceptions and future experiments will probably change our ideas on the subject still more, though they can hardly shake the fact that the palm is a water …
We’re beginning to see details of a pilot program to conserve water in the Colorado River Basin to prop up declining water levels in the basin’s major reservoirs by paying water users to not use water. The Southern Nevada Water Authority’s board last week approved that agency’s $2 million contribution to what would be a …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River System Conservation Program’ »
The AP’s Jason Dearen has an update on California communities at risk of running out of water: In February, the California Department of Public Health listed 17 mostly rural water systems as having less than two months water supply in storage. But in recent weeks that number has fallen to three. In February, as media …
Continue reading ‘An update on California towns running out of water. Or not.’ »
One of the epic Colorado River stories involves the Great El Niño of 1983, the year they almost lost Glen Canyon Dam. With a massive snowpack melting off in a hurry in June of that year, Lake Powell filled to the spillways, which couldn’t handle the load, and it is said we came close to catastrophe. …