Increasingly, around the United States I see more and more of this sort of story, in which agencies view sewage as an asset: Kenner is seeking state and federal permits to build a 2-mile-long pipeline carrying 17 million gallons of treated sewage a day* into the LaBranche Wetlands. The goal is twofold: Help restore the …
Re my recent discussion of the of the concept of “beneficial use” in western water law, a friend attending a water conservation conference noted he’d run across the concept of “beneficial reduction”. What, in legal terms, might that look like?
Here in the Southwestern United States, we loves us some hot, hot El Niño action. Warm up that equatorial Pacific, and before you know it, ZAM, we’re being pelted with snowflakes and having to shovel our driveways with those wussy regular shovels desert dwellers use. (True story: I actually have a real snow shovel. Lissa …
Continue reading ‘How’s that whole “El Niño” thing workin’ out for ya?’ »
First, my apologies to Michael Campana, for whom my recent disquisition on hookers and blow on the Lower Colorado seems to have caused some inadvertent difficulties. I expect my Texas neighbors are the forgiving sort and will welcome you back. It would be unfortunate, given their recent difficulties with the whole running-out-of-water thing, if they …
Continue reading ‘Hookers and blow on the Lower Colorado – boring wonky back story’ »
An intriguing paper from some folks at UT Austin, looking at the isotopic composition of water in Austin-area streams. Turns out that the natural source water in the area has very different strontium ratios from the imported municipal water brought in from their Colorado River: In the more urbanized watersheds, Sr-isotope mass balance indicates that …
Continue reading ‘That Austin streamwater ain’t comin’ from nature’ »
Hey Lower Colorado River Basin. Can we talk? I know, I know. It’s New Water Year’s Eve and it’s like a hundred something degrees and sunny and you wanna go water skiing on Lake Mead, all fat and happy with its 1,115.18 feet of surface elevation, glistening in that warm Nevada sunshine. Or you wanna …
Continue reading ‘Time for a Lower Basin New Year’s resolution?’ »
Sept. 30 is the end of the “water year”*, and it’s been another dry one at the Heineman-Fleck house. With data back to the 1999-2000 year now, this is the fourth consecutive dry year relative to my personal long term mean here in Albuquerque’s near northeast heights: * Water managers here usually (though not for …
From this week’s Albuquerque Journal, a piece looking at the history and future of the notion of “beneficial use” in western water law: The doctrine’s history is bound up in the ideas of the generation of European immigrants who swept across the region in the 1800s, establishing what became United States law. “The climate is …
Continue reading ‘beneficial use: quaint, yet enduringly sturdy’ »
When do you not want your forecaster telling you everything she knows? Tom Pagano, who used to do our Rio Grande forecasts for the NRCS and now is a sort of global wandering river forecaster without portfolio, explains from the vantage point of a passenger sitting at Gatwick: Imagine a parallel universe without bias on …
Chris Austin, the long time brains behind the invaluable Aquafornia (done in partnership with the Water Education Foundation), has a launched a new blog aimed at diving deeper into the weeds. I’ve already learned stuff from it that I didn’t know, such as this: Negotiations with Mexico: Regarding bi-national negotiations with Mexico on Colorado River issues, …
Continue reading ‘US-Mexico water talks stalling – what I learned from a new water blog’ »