In answer to my question over the weekend about whether the big California snowpack might have “bought Californians nothing other than a new set of facts on the ground to fight over”, there is this possible answer from Mike Taugher: Delta water users have sued to block a temporary decrease in pumping meant to save …
Seen in the morning print edition of the Sacramento Bee, Tim Johnson on the dangers faced by those plying our trade in Mexico: Some 66 Mexican journalists have been killed in a little more than five years, many if not most for exercising their professions. Just last week, authorities found the body of Noel López …
SACRAMENTO – Marc Reisner famously called the Colorado River “the most legislated, most debated and most litigated river in the entire world.” As for the “most litigated,” U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Michael Connor last week said wants to hand the plaque over to California. “I’m going to shift the title to the Bay-Delta region,” …
SACRAMENTO – My friend Judy Liddell*, wise in the ways of bird travel, tipped me to be on the lookout for the yellow-billed magpie while I’m in northern California. She knows whereof she speaks. I saw my first one on the roof of my motel this morning as I ventured out for breakfast. They’re everywhere. …
The headline message in the first iteration of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado Basin supply-demand study is “9 percent”: Under the Downscaled GCM Projected scenario, the mean natural flow as measured at Lees Ferry over the next 50 years is projected to decrease by approximately 9 percent, along with a projected increase in both drought …
I’m headed up to Boulder this week for the University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center’s “Navigating the Future of the Colorado River” conference (more from John McChesney here), then off from there to Sacramento and the Bay Area (with the kind support and assistance of Stanford’s Lane Center) to learn more about California’s water …
Happy to welcome Neil Singer’s “Wonders of Nuclear Fusion” to our UNM Press Worlds of Wonder family:
A big focus of my reporting on western water right now is process. It’s clear we have supply-demand imbalances. What are the processes by which we’ll respond? What successes have we had to date in creating institutional arrangements that can reduce use in response, and where and how have we failed (are we failing) to …
Continue reading ‘On the importance of stakeholder communication and buy-in’ »
It’s been a weird couple of days in Albuquerque. Last night, driving down from the foothills near sunset, I could see a thick haze building across the city, and by the time I got home I could smell smoke. Turns out it’s blowing up from a wildfire in southeastern Arizona (the Wallow, 106,000 acres at last …
USGS researcher Mike Dettinger, whose paper on “atmospheric rivers” (ARs) and climate variability in California I highlighted over the weekend, has a new paper in the June Journal of the American Water Resources Association looking at how climate change might influence the phenomenon in the future. AR’s dominate California’s precipitation (and water supply) delivering a …
Continue reading ‘Increased flood risk in California under climate change’ »