John Bass has been pushing an excellent question about the direction of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan: Why isn’t the “fortress Delta” solution the most cost effective way of pursuing the co-equal goals question. John’s come to this line of thinking based on a cost-benefit argument: Couldn’t armoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levees achieve the …
Continue reading ‘As Southern California eyes the Delta, a question of cost’ »
Well that was fun while it lasted, eh? Looks like it’s back to draining reservoirs on the Colorado! 2011, a big sloppy wet kiss of a water year, pumped up total storage in the reservoirs behind Glen Canyon and Hoover dams by some 5 million acre feet. But the first forecast of the year suggests …
Continue reading ‘2012: back to draining the Colorado River’s reservoirs?’ »
When I was writing this, the working title was “optimism”. It’s a piece for Stanford’s Lane Center, based on work I’ve been doing on Colorado River Water management. It was spawned by a conversation last summer with Jon Christensen, the Lane Center’s executive director. I was talking about my optimism about our problem-solving ability, and …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: What seven states can agree to do’ »
It would be easy to look at this Arizona Republic story as another example of the profligate water wastefulness that will ultimately doom Phoenix: Valley homeowners’ excess citrus fruit, often picked by volunteer gleaners, can’t be shipped across state lines this year after a fungal disease known as sweet orange scab was found in some …
Continue reading ‘This is what happens when you have more water than you need’ »
In water policy terms, this is one of the most important stories I’ve done in a while: The steady dripping into Carl Axness’ cistern is the sound of next spring’s water supply. The snow melting from his Rio Rancho roof is the bounty of December’s storms. For the better part of four years, that roof …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: rainwater harvesting, the bounding scenario’ »
Really. I wrote a newspaper piece about football (the pointyball kind). The backstory is the recent departure of a chap named Mike Locksley, who had a less than successful record coaching the University of New Mexico’s football team. I took to the front page of the morning paper to be what is almost certainly his …
I’d have to call Emma Marris’ The Rambunctious Garden the most influential book I read in 2011, in large part because it fell on fertile ground. I’ve been puzzling for a long time over the question of what counts as “nature”, both in our political discourse and in my own heart of hearts. Why is it, …
The final Heineman-Fleck backyard precip tally for 2011 is 6.03 inches (15.3 cm). That’s 61.5 percent of the long term average, where by “long term” I mean back to 2000. It is the driest year in my record, just a smidge under 2002’s 6.21 inches (15.8 cm). Only two months, October and the just-completed (I …
A year ago, I puzzled over the implications of the collapse of the southwest housing business for our long term water future. We’ve got another year of data, and no real sign that the southwestern growth engine in Phoenix and Las Vegas, the two cities closest to the edge of the water cliff, are coming …
Continue reading ‘Housing and water: a year later, are we closer to an answer?’ »
Anthony Downs at Brookings, from “What’s Wrong With American Housing“: Even before the dramatic collapse of housing starts after 2005, it should have been obvious to home building firms that they were in for a downward ride after starts surpassed two million in both 2004 and 2005. Those years of peak production led to an oversupply in …