I’ve been writing recently about the struggles to set sane water rates for Albuquerque that take into account conservation goals as well as the need to maintain cash flow for for a largely fixed-cost operation. It’s a tough problem. But imagine sorting this out for an entire nation: BEIJING—China will roll out wide-reaching reforms in …
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User “A” has some water rights that he or she would like to put to use for economic benefit, but with the current amount available and the current economics of the business in question, it’s just not penciling out. User “B” comes along offering to pay to put the water to an alternative use. What’s …
While much of the attention on the “ridiculously resilient ridge” has, rightly, focused on its effect on California’s drought, out here in the intermountain west we’ve been suffering too. Albuquerque is on the brink of its longest precip-free winter stretch on record (these records go back to 1920). And for the Colorado Basin? What had …
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This great old bridge over the Little Colorado River is gone: Built in 1928, it’s been replaced a wider and much more boring bridge. Its story, from the Historic American Engineering Record: In 1914 the El Paso Bridge and Iron Company erected a two-span steel truss to replace the existing timber structure over the Little …
From this morning’s newspaper: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said Texas can go ahead with its lawsuit that claims groundwater pumping in southern New Mexico is draining the Rio Grande and depriving Texas users of water to which they are legally entitled. Texas cleared a major hurdle with the decision, which could set the …
A detail of the new public art, a sculpture named “Guardians” by Nora Naranjo Morse, in the park around the corner from our house:
My colleauge Lauren Villagran, our new Las Cruces bureau, wrote in this morning’s Journal about the struggle over the future of the Gila River in New Mexico: Should the river run wild, or be managed and controlled? Should New Mexico take the water or leave it?
When New Mexico was being entertained to newspaper and television coverage last year of water trucks rolling to the handful of communities that, in the midst of drought, had run out, I did a piece in the paper trying to get my arms around the folks he hadn’t run out of water. What were they …
Continue reading ‘In a drought, who runs out of water, and who pays?’ »
As California grapples with drought, it’s a good time to revisit Milly et al.’s 2008 Science paper Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management? I’m not statistician enough to answer the question posed by the post’s title, but it’s at least worth considering, as part of the state’s policy responses to this drought on multiple time scales (both …
Continue reading ‘Has California’s probability density function changed?’ »
I’m on the hunt for the origins of the phrase “practicably irrigable”. If anyone has any insights, please jump in on the comments. Here’s what I know: The concept is central to water law in the western United States. The first reference I’m able to find in the U.S. legal canon is in the 1960 …