Ever the journalist in search of gloomy extremes, I just noticed that total storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs used to manage flows on the Colorado River, is currently forecast (USBR pdf here) to end the current water year at its lowest level since 1968, when Powell, the uppermost reservoir …
Continue reading ‘Total Mead/Powell storage headed for lowest level since Powell first filled’ »
It’s complicated. That’s what I realized this morning as I engaged in the now-nearly-mandatory journalistic self-promotion exercise – tweeting my work. On one of the local water mailing lists, I was recently taken to task for feeding drought paranoia rather than pulling together comprehensive analyses. It’s a fair cop. I’ll try to keep it in …
Continue reading ‘stuff I wrote elsewhere: junior groundwater pumping and the “futile call”’ »
Above is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. Below, the Drinkwell Original Pet Fountain. Homage?
In the midst of our drought, you can still find water if you know where to look. The Rio Grande through Albuquerque is flanked by drains most of the way, ditches dug to intercept groundwater, draining swampy bottomland so it could be farmed and, ultimately, become our urban/suburban landscape. This dog, with help, found the …
Continue reading ‘Water in the desert, cute doggie edition’ »
Folks at the newly formed New Mexico Mercury are taking on New Mexico’s water problems in a big way, which I applaud. But, as gently as I can do this, I need to engage them on what I think is a critical issue: their reuse argument: Here’s VB Price: For New Mexico to get its …
Continue reading ‘Tilting carefully at the reuse windmill’ »
We’ve been doing this all wrong. Growing up in LA with a May 5 birthday, I was steeped from the beginning in the whole “Cinco de Mayo” thing, the “Mexican Independence Day” that’s not. It had yet to turn into the beer marketing event that it is today. I realize now that the community I …
Concerned the current drought will end? No worries, climate change has your back: Climate change is likely to render a key part of the water supply for Santa Fe and Albuquerque increasingly unreliable in coming decades, according to a new analysis by federal scientists. The San Juan-Chama project, which imports water from the mountains of …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: San Juan-Chama supply at risk from climate change’ »
I spent the morning in an Albuquerque court listening to a fascinating legal argument about water rights. (Update: story from the am newspaper) The real issue, involving the way central New Mexico’s largest irrigation district allocates water, remains undecided – this morning’s ruling was issued based on procedural issues rather than the substance at hand. …
My fascination with tree rings (buy my book!) is mostly about climate stories. But the rings tell other tales as well: According to folklore from the valley Hallingdal, between Oslo and Bergen, a young girl was locked into a farm storehouse to protect her from the Black Death. The pandemic killed tens of millions in …
From Atlanta, another example of a concept we’re seeing increasingly here in the western United States – groundwater augmentation of dwindling river supplies: Georgia’s efforts to quench metro Atlanta’s thirst include a $1 billion proposal to pump water from one aquifer to another and then release it into the Flint River in times of drought. …
Continue reading ‘In America, we pump water out of the ground to put it in our rivers’ »