Stop For Horses In Underpants
Seen on the morning bike ride.
Archive of entries posted by jfleck
New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande: forest of cottonwoods, forest of pecans
This Rio Grande crossing, just south of Belen, 30-plus miles downstream from Albuquerque, has changed dramatically since Jack Delano took the picture above in spring 1943. The Bosque I’ve stared at Delano’s picture often, because of the story it tells – a broad open river valley. It’s nothing like that today. I pieced together …
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Are We Headed for the First Colorado River Compact Tripwire?
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck The Bureau of Reclamation’s January 2024 “Most Probable” 24-month study forecasts that annual releases from Glen Canyon Dam for both Water Years 2025 and 2026 will be 7.48 million acre-feet per year (maf). If this happens, the ten-year total flow at Lee Ferry for the 2017-2026 period will drop …
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Somos Atrisco: Anchoring greater Albuquerque’s heritage
Work is moving forward on a new park sort of thing to mark an important piece of Albuquerque’s historical geography: the old Atrisco ditch heading. Carolyn Carlson reports in the new City Desk ABQ (yay non-profit journalism!) that the Bernalillo County Commission adopted the “Atrisco Acequia Madre Master Plan” at its Jan. 9 meeting. It’ll …
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Preliminary: New Mexico’s Rio Grande Compact debt rose ~25,000 acre feet in 2023
New Mexico once again fell short in 2023 of the requirement set out in the Rio Grande Compact to deliver water to Elephant Butte Reservoir for use in Southern New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico, delivering ~25,000 acre feet less than the Compact requires, according to preliminary estimates presented at Monday’s meeting of the Middle Rio …
Colorado River Basin Reservoir Storage at the End of 2023 – Holding On to What We Have
By Jack Schmidt | January 9, 2024 There was not much loss in reservoir storage in the Colorado River basin in December 2023. Total storage in the basin’s reservoirs only declined by 17,000 acre feet during the month, and the combined contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell increased by 68,000 acre feet. At year’s …
Colorado River stuff roundup
Peering out across the Colorado River landscape for 2024, a few things I’ve been reading to help catch y’all up: Paying to conserve Annie Snider had a terrific story in late November about the role of federal cash in the short term solutions to the Colorado River’s challenges that needs to echo outside the usual …
The case for renaming Albuquerque’s “Civic Plaza” after jazz giant John Lewis (who grew up here)
There’s a fun feel of community pride, and joy, in the wave of front page stories in Albuquerque newspapers in 1971 when jazz great John Lewis, founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet, brought the group to his home town to play with the Albuquerque Symphony Orchestra at the University of New Mexico’s Popejoy Hall. Lewis …
Lousy start to the 2023-24 snowpack year on the Rio Grande
Three months into the 2023-24 water year, we have our first early look at what sort of runoff to expect on the Rio Grande in the coming year, and it doesn’t look great. The January NRCS median forecast for March-July runoff is 42 percent of “normal” at Otowi, the critical forecast point where the Rio …
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2023 in review: Exploring the commons, looking for a place to pee
On my penultimate bike ride of 2023 Friday, I turned west on Bobby Foster Road in Albuquerque’s southwest valley, wandering past junk yards and Ace Metals: “THE BEST PRICES IN ALBUQUERQUE For: Steel, Iron, Junk Cars, Tin, Appliances, Aluminum, Copper, Brass, Batteries, Stainless Radiators, and Catalytic Converters”. With my current loosey-goosey career, it’s easier for …
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