The Colorado River Basin will be less green
Cities. Farms. The natural environment. All of it. We can do it in an orderly way, or devolve into chaos. That’s it. That’s the blog post.
Archive of entries posted by jfleck
Sure, dead bodies in Lake Mead, whatever. I remain optimistic.
It has become a Frequently Asked Question of late here at Inkstain World Headquarters: John, you’ve frequently been quoted in the past expressing optimism about the future of the Colorado River Basin. Dude, Lake Mead is so low they’re finding dead bodies. Are you still optimistic? My answer, of course, is “yes”. It’s in my …
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“seeking out the #SlowWays”
I’m feeling old and tired, so Squadrats, a new (to me) GPS mappy bike game, arrived at a good time. There’s a video game culture catch phrase, “numbers go up”, which describes the incentives designers have to give you ways to make some number go up, to lure/hook you into playing ever more. (Think “streaks” …
Kilgore Trout on Cultural Cognition
Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity. Kilgore Trout, in Lingo-Three, as quoted in Vonnegut 1973
“Before 1800”
I love living in a town with a ditch bearing the name of co-workers. I love living in a town with a ditch that’s been continuously, tenuously irrigating this land since the 1700s. I love dodging traffic by turning down a “Dead End” street, knowing that only means cars, that bikes can pop out on …
Crisis Managemnent on the Colorado River
Important observation from Jack Schmidt, Utah State Colorado River guy, on the new constraints on Colorado River management as Lake Powell and Lake Mead drop: “We’re in crisis management, and health and human safety issues, including production of hydropower, are taking precedence,” said Jack Schmidt, director of the center for Colorado River Studies at Utah …
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Pitt on “Day Zero”
Audubon’s Jennifer Pitt, one of the most stubbornly optimistic actors in the Colorado River Basin, wrote this Friday: [F]ederal officials project that within two years, the water level in Lake Powell could be so low that it would be impossible for water to flow through the dam’s turbine intakes. When that happens, it’s clear the …
“unless extraordinary circumstances arise” – tweaking Colorado River Basin rules
Watching the back-and-forth among the U.S. Department of Interior and the seven Colorado River Basin States over Glen Canyon Dam operations over the last few months, I’d been thinking that we’ve dropped into an area where the rules developed in 2007, and tweaked in the years since, no longer apply. In short, if we use …
Time to rethink the Upper Basin’s “Bonus Water” contributions to Lake Mead?
By Eric Kuhn For years, the Colorado River management community has ignored, or at the very least sidestepped, a problem that has effectively sent more Upper Basin water downstream to help fill Lake Mead. But with the reservoir system operating on razor-thin margins, this “bonus water” – seeping through the sandstone cliffs of Glen Canyon, …
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Losing ground(water) in Albuquerque
At the eastern end of Sandia Road NW in Albuquerque is a ratty but important piece of Albuquerque’s water management history – City Well #2. Maintained now by the US Geological Survey, City #2 was installed in the late 1950s, a pivotal time in Albuquerque water management. The community’s population was booming. To meet the …