I’ve written before about the possibility that we could view Australia’s struggles with long term drought, especially in the Murray-Darling Basin, as a model for how to deal with things here in the arid southwest. This version of the model is perhaps not quite so hopeful. From Australian Broadcasting: A guide for water allocations in …
I’m guessing folks at “Californians for Population Stabilization” didn’t start with a worry about water supplies and then decide, “Wow, limiting immigration would be a great way of dealing with this problem!” Over the last thirty years, population has grown by one million in San Diego and population levels are projected to grow by another …
The Rio Grande at Albuquerque’s Central Avenue bridge dropped to 200 cubic feet per second overnight, perfect timing for this morning’s newspaper piece about low flows on the river (sub/ad req). For those not versed in our obscure ways of water measurement, “200 cfs” translates roughly as “awful damn low”: Water agencies are scrambling to …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Parched Rio Grande’ »
Saw the strangest thing this morning in the pond outside my office at home. The pond’s a round metal stock tank Lissa got me for my 40th birthday. It’s popular with the birds, but never like what I saw this morning – swimming white-winged doves. The picture’s not great. I watched ’em for a while, …
I used to write a lot about the Santa Fe Institute and the fascinating trans-disciplinary research that goes on there, but in recent years I sorta lost touch. I went up last week for a visit to reconnect, and, among other things, have tea (sub/ad req): SANTA FE — To understand the Santa Fe Institute, …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Tea at the Santa Fe Institute’ »
Re Dan Sarewitz’s Nature column of last April about the value of “Pentagon pull” to drive energy innovation, here’s Elisabeth Rosenthal in the New York Times: Even as Congress has struggled unsuccessfully to pass an energy bill and many states have put renewable energy on hold because of the recession, the military this year has …
Southwestern environmental journalist Laura Paskus has a new web site. Lots of great work linked there, check it out.
When the price of water rises, ag users feel the most pain. That seems to be what is happening in northern San Diego County, where rising prices of water delivered by the Metropolitan Water District to the Valley Center Municipal Water District is apparently making a big dent in the avocado business, reports Pat Maio: …
This being “World Rivers Day“, I spent the morning puzzling over the nature of ours. Truth is, I was planning on being aware of our river this morning anyway, via a ride on my new bicycle (seen here propped against a log at one of the constructed wetlands adjacent to the Rio Grande). I don’t …
“Water year” 2010 ends next week, making this a good time to take stock of our historic position on the Colorado River. And by a couple of different measures, things are truly historic: The latest forecast (and right now forecasting amounts to tiny fractions of in inch) puts Lake Mead’s surface elevation at 1084.14 feet …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: End of the Water Year, Taking Stock’ »