ALAMOSA, COLORADO – Meandering toward Boulder for this week’s Getches-Wilkinson Center Colorado River conference, I stopped this evening in Alamosa, Colorado, in the San Luis Valley. I love the drive up the back way, through the San Luis Valley and into the heart of the Rockies, and I split it up into a couple of …
There was deep tension in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in September 1947 as the negotiators for the Upper Colorado River Basin states gathered to try to hammer out a deal to divvy up their share of the Colorado’s water. The 1922 Compact had split the river in two at Lee Ferry, and left for later the question …
My city councilor, Tammy Fiebelkorn, gets it. Here’s what she said about the city of Albuquerque’s purchase of an old motel in our neighborhood to use as transitional housing for young people (18 – 25) on the edge of homelessness: The San Mateo Inn is across the street from a bus stop, a short drive …
Continue reading ‘Capability, Dignity, and Albuquerque’s San Mateo Inn’ »
With the snow mostly melted, it’s time for a fresh look at the water storage situation on New Mexico’s Rio Grande – water saved from the spring runoff this year, and carried over from previous years, to use for irrigation, municipal use, and environmental flows during the summer. Total reservoir storage got a bump up …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico 2024 End of May Reservoir Storage’ »
A guest post by Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University By Jack Schmidt | May 22, 2024 Opportunities to rebuild basin-wide reservoir storage have been rare in the 21st century. On April 3 2024, the snow accumulation season in the Colorado River watershed ended and the snow …
Continue reading ‘End of Season Wrap-Up – Holding on to What We’ve Got’ »
Lissa has been nurturing this hedgehog cactus since we brought it back from Tucson a couple of years ago, wondering if it would survive our Albuquerque winters. This morning, it started putting on a show.
With the obligatory shovels in pre-softened dirt, a group of political leaders from the Navajo Nation, New Mexico state and local government, and water agencies this morning (Wed. 5/15/2024) formally inaugurated a new pipeline being built to connect the Navajo community of To’Hajiilee to the 3.5 million gallon reservoir in the picture – clean, piped …
Continue reading ‘To’Hajiilee water line groundbreaking: “an impossible project”’ »
Two key takeaways from Monday’s (May 13, 2024) Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board meeting: El Vado Dam, crucial for managing irrigation, municipal, and environmental water through New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande valley, will be out of service indefinitely – for many, many years. The vague structure of alternative storage options, using other existing dams, …
We’ll get an update on the status of El Vado Dam and related issues at this afternoon’s (Mon. 5/13/24) meeting of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s board of directors. This is an enormously consequential issue for Rio Grande flows through central New Mexico. The Meeting Today’s board meeting starts at 3 p.m. at the …
The Rio Grande is up through Albuquerque right now, swollen with spring snowmelt. But not for long. We may already have hit the runoff peak at a bit above 3,000 cubic feet per second in late April, and a friend who’s been cheerfully nagging me to float it with them talked me into locking down …
Continue reading ‘Floating Albuquerque’s Rio Grande: notes on “naturalness”’ »