Framing clean water and kids – is the glass half dirty or half clean?
The Independent – Dirty water and poor hygiene stunting growth of millions: The BBC – Clean water and soap ‘boost growth’ in young children:
Archive of entries posted by jfleck
Fourteen years of Colorado River Basin drought
Here’s a striking graph distributed this week at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 2014 Colorado River Annual Operating Plan consultation meeting in Las Vegas: That’s annual unregulated* inflow into Lake Powell on the Colorado River. A couple of things worth noting: 2012 and 2013 are two of only four years since Glen Canyon Dam was completed with …
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Mike Taugher, a journalist’s journalist
Amid some tears today over the tragic death of my former colleague Mike Taugher, I found a couple of stories he wrote about California water worth sharing. Mike was the Albuquerque Journal’s environment beat reporter back in the 1990s, and a nicer colleague you couldn’t have found, a talent, a joy to work with, a …
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the irrigation efficiency dilemma
In the arid west, increased irrigation efficiency is one of the most commonly suggested solutions to our water problems. But Jay Lund and Thomas Harter point out the dilemma: In many areas, drought-year groundwater supplies depend substantially on irrigation inefficiency in wetter years, when surface water is available and used by farmers. Ironically, local inefficiency …
ditch, farm, mountains, sky
beavers
There’s a little concrete check dam in Albuquerque’s riverside woods at the bottom of a pond built by humans as wildlife habitat. Among the wildlife that has taken up residence is a family of beavers, who have built a palatial home on the island in the middle of the pond. But they seem dissatisfied with …
Praise be to the gods of storytelling
update: A helpful reader had a correction: Hub Moeur was Gov. Moeur’s, nephew, not his son. Rats. previously: This evening, I snapped to the fact that J.H. “Hub” Moeur, the Arizona attorney who as chief counsel for the Arizona Interstate Stream Commission filed the 1952 brief in the seminal Colorado River case Arizona V. California …
the first rule of journalism
always get the name of the beer: On my way home from work, I picked up a six-pack of Saison 88, a beer produced by Santa Fe Brewing Co. The advertised alcohol content is 5.5 percent.
Why fighting over water isn’t a bad thing
As I learn about the development of large-scale water management institutions in regions other than my own (the southwestern United States), I’m increasingly convinced that our oft-discussed tradition of conflict – Marc Reisner famously described the Colorado as “the most legislated, most debated, and most litigated river in the entire world” – may really be viewed …
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Stuff I wrote elsewhere: farming cottonwoods
Here’s another look into the western water solution space – an agreement on the Lower Rio Grande under which willing farmers will have a chance to sell their water rights for use recreating lost riparian habitat (story behind survey wall for non-subscribers): To the list of the Lower Rio Grande’s famous crops, like Hatch’s chile …
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