When last we visited, Lake Mead sat at elevation 1,054.28 feet above sea level. It’s now at 1,058.34, which is up ~13 feet from when I took the above photo last December. I hope they moved those chairs. The good news is the current forecast calling for the combined storage of Lake Mead and Lake …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: mid-July Colorado River status report’ »
A guest post by Friend of Inkstain Jason Robison, the Carl M. Williams Professor of Law & Social Responsibility at the University of Wyoming College of Law and chair of the Colorado River Research Group By Jason Robison A few weeks ago, on June 22, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) handed down its much-awaited decision …
Continue reading ‘Arizona v. Navajo Nation: What SCOTUS Didn’t Do Along the Colorado River’ »
The sandbars are starting to emerge from the Rio Grande as river managers drop the flow through Albuquerque to match inflow from upstream. One of the things we’re watching as the river recedes is the vegetation on the sandbars. Did it survive the high flows? Over time, we’re seeing a trajectory from sandbar to vegetated …
Continue reading ‘Rio Grande still high through Albuquerque, but less so’ »
Nearly every time I ride past this place, I take a picture and try to remember to write about bananas in Albuquerque history. I have quite a few pictures. Today is the day I remembered. It’s at First and Roma downtown, backing up on the railroad tracks, around the corner from the new at-grade railroad …
Dani Prokop had a really helpful story last week explaining what happens next in the Texas v. New Mexico (and technically Colorado, too, right?) lawsuit over the rules for sharing the Rio Grande’s water. To refresh memory, the three states in February announced a proposed settlement. Key bits from Dani’s update: It’s not done yet. …
Continue reading ‘What next for Texas v. New Mexico Rio Grande suit?’ »
Out for an early walk this morning to the Rio Grande, we found a river settling nicely back into its main channel after a couple of months during which we allowed it to play a bit. Since April, the river’s been up and out of the 600-foot wide channel dug for it in the late …
We’ve been having a great year on the Rio Grande through Albuquerque, with overbanking flows to delight the river nerds and mosquitos alike. But this is about to change. Beginning next week (June 26, 2023), the Army Corps of Engineers will begin dropping flows out of Cochiti Reservoir, the main stem dam upstream of town. …
Continue reading ‘After a high-flow spring, Albuquerque’s Rio Grande is about to drop in a hurry’ »
Jack Schmidt, Charles Yackulic, and Eric Kuhn have published an invaluable new overview of how we got into this mess on the Colorado River, and some of the things we need to think about to get out of it. Schmidt, John C., Charles B. Yackulic, and Eric Kuhn. “The Colorado River water crisis: Its origin …
Continue reading ‘Schmidt et al: How we got here on the Colorado River Overview’ »
I learned stuff at last week’s Getches-Wilkinson Center Colorado River conference at the University of Colorado Law School. I learned: The bodacious snowpack means the chance of Lake Mead dropping below elevation 1,000 is zero. We still need to cut 1.5 million acre feet of Colorado River water use, at least. We still have no …
BOULDER – I spent a few nights last week in a $200-plus a night hotel in Boulder, Colorado, that someone else paid for. It was bigger than the first apartment Lissa and I lived together in. That’s privilege, I guess? There was some Colorado River stuff going on in Boulder – huge thanks to the …