The greatest beneficiaries of the Colorado River’s bounty, in terms of irrigation water for agriculture, are at the bottom end of the system – in California’s Imperial Valley and across the border in Yuma County. But the community payoff for all that liquid wealth seems limited. From today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly unemployment report: …
In Cloverdale, Calif., (in Sonoma County north of San Francisco), the local municipal water utility is ratcheting down on outdoor watering: Peak demand on hot days in May and June has come close to maxing out the system’s capacity to deliver to Cloverdale’s population of 8,629. “We’re not in a crisis mode at the moment. …
Hillary Rosner, writing at the New York Times, talked to Craig Allen and captured the essence of the angst as the west burns: “These forests did not evolve with this type of fire,” said Dr. Allen. “Fire was a big deal in New Mexico, but it was a different kind of fire.” The result, he …
Atlanta won a big victory today when the Supreme Court turned down appeals from Florida and Alabama, essentially upholding the Georgia city’s right to use water from the Army Corps of Engineers’ Lake Lanier. At least that’s how Atlanta boosters quoted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution are framing it: Shortly after the high court made …
Continue reading ‘In the southeast, back to not fightin’ over water?’ »
When the US government’s Board of Commissioners on the Irrigation of the San Joaquin, Tulare, and Sacramento Valleys of the State of California duly reported to Congress in 1874, its members issued a warning. If a plan for irrigating the rich but arid lands of California’s great Central Valley is not worked out with care the …
Continue reading ‘The Sacramento Delta: “an intricacy of endless legal troubles”’ »
Here’s a cool map for folks thinking about California’s current discussions about building some sort of Peripheral Thingie to carry water around (through? beneath?) the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta: That’s the vote thirty years ago on a ballot initiative asking voters whether the state might build a Peripheral Canal to do the same thing. The red …
When I interviewed Mike Connor, the Bureau of Reclamation’s then-newly minted commissioner, back in 2009, one of his central points was that the era of American dam building was behind us: Michael Connor, the New Mexican who took over as head of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation three months ago, inherited an empire. It is …
Over at the work blog, I’ve been having fun with the onset of the North American Monsoon (or lack thereof). My smartypants idea Tuesday, to crowdsource the problem of predicting the onset of our summer rains, turned out in retrospect to be lousy. I made a spreadsheet and everything. So far just four entires, what …
I’ve been using Texas and the drought of 2011 as an argument for optimism about US water management: I’d argue the Texas experience shows that, when communities are really up against it, they’ve demonstrated the ability to do a far better job at managing scarce water. But there’s a huge hole in my argument. What …
Continue reading ‘Edwards Aquifer and the hole in my argument’ »
In the morning paper, I pine over our elusive monsoon forecast: I know this is the time you would really like a forecast. You would really like to know when New Mexico’s summer rains will finally get here, and whether we will have a wet monsoon season. Sorry. Can’t help. Believe me, I’d like to. …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: forecasting is hard, especially about the monsoon’ »