Archive of entries posted by jfleck
Graphing the energy boom
I’ve not been writing much about energy for the last couple of years, and only following it shallowly, so the fact that New Mexico’s oil production has reached the highest level since 1998 kinda snuck up on me. But what’s going on here is child’s play. Look at North Dakota: John McChesney’s done some good …
Untangling the QSA
Elizabeth Varin had an interesting story this morning about the latest Imperial Irrigation District discussions about the Quantification Settlement Agreement*, the Byzantine** water deal that provided a path for California to go on a Colorado River diet (reducing its use to its legally allotted 4.4 million acre feet per year). The deal has two key …
Coveting thy neighbor’s water
It’s not clear to me whether the US Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study is a tool for developing solutions to the long term supply-demand imbalance on the river, or a process for the states and other interests to stake out their turf. Probably some of both. Witness, for example, …
Power for the coming centuries!
In Colossus, Michael Hiltzik talks about the way Hoover Dam, during its construction, became a tourist spectacle. When Lissa and I were in Boulder City last week, I found this in the museum-y hallway at the Boulder Dam Brewing Company (which has a lovely collection of similar memorabilia), a poster hawking tours: THE MAKING OF …
What’s Aaron Million’s Water For?
Not being up in Colorado, I don’t have a good feel for how seriously to take Aaron Million’s Flaming Gorge pipeline proposal. My hallway conversations at CRWUA left me with the feeling that not a lot of people in the basin take it very seriously, but I don’t know water issues in the state of …
Colorado River Water Users, odds and ends
Some more odds and ends from last week’s Colorado River Water Users Association meeting Yuma Desalting Plant The trial run of the Yuma Desalting Plant “went well,” according to Terry Fulp, head of the USBR Lower Colorado office. YPD was built in the early 1990s to clean up icky agricultural drain water to meet US …
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Las Vegas, NV
Weird shit, well lit
A drought of the Lower Colorado River Basin’s own making
For better or worse, my decision to not pay the $15 a day for an internet connection at Caeser’s Palace has left me with a bow wave of things to write about after a week spent in an around the Colorado River Water Users Association’s annual meeting in Las Vegas, NV. Let’s start with Lake …
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Grand Canyon
Standing at the Grand Canyon’s south rim this evening at sunset, I saw a woman walk up clutching her luggage, spellbound. “Oh my God,” she said. The look on her face said everything. She was seeing it for the first time. She’d come to celebrate an “important birthday”, and said she wanted to spend it …