Per Dan McKay and Theresa Davis at the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico State Engineer John D’Antonio is stepping down. In doing so, he was sharply critical of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s decision to not ask the New Mexico legislature for increased funding for his depleted department despite booming state revenue: [H]e cited a …
I’m heading to Phoenix tomorrow (Wed. Nov. 10) to appear on what I hope will be a useful PBS Newshour live event: The Colorado River runs nearly fifteen hundred miles, winding through seven states and Mexico. It supplies drinking water to nearly 40 million people, irrigates nearly 4 million acres of farmland and attracts millions …
Continue reading ‘Watch Live: Tipping Point – The Colorado River Basin’ »
With the ink barely dry on the ill-named Colorado River “Drought Contingency Plan”, the Lower Basin states (Nevada, Arizona, and California) are already cooking up a Plan C for even deeper reductions. Joanna Allhands at the Arizona Republic has a nice look at what we know about the details: Arizona, California and Nevada are moving …
Continue reading ‘Scaling back, even more, in the Lower Colorado River Basin’ »
Peña Blanca, NM – The Cochiti Main, winding through the village of Peña Blanca, was still flowing Saturday morning with some of the last of this year’s irrigation water destined for farms to the south. I’m a bit jammed up in my effort to return to writing (see below for the “some personal news” portion …
Heather Sackett did a good story this week on new data Brad Udall has been sharing that geographically parses the declines in streamflow across the Colorado River Basin. For folks like us down here in New Mexico, dependent on the San Juan as a critical source of supply, the news is not good: This month, …
One of the central questions dimly visible in the early discussions around the upcoming renegotiation of the Colorado River’s water operations and allocations rules is the question of how bad a “worst case” scenario should be considered. This is crucial, because it constrains what sort of questions must then be confronted. The lower the future …
At last week’s Getches-Wilkinson Center conference in Boulder, attorney Jay Weiner, who represents tribes (but was careful to say he was not speaking on any particular tribe’s behalf) made an important point, which is repeated in this excellent piece by Mark Armao this week in Grist: “The basin is free-riding off of undeveloped tribal water …
At last week’s Getches-Wilkinson Center conference on Colorado River stuff, I had the privilege of moderating a panel with the provocative title “Time to Get Real”. The opening remarks from Kathryn Sorensen of Arizona State University seemed worth repeating, and she kindly gave me permission to post on the blog (the pictures were her slide …
Continue reading ‘Kathryn Sorensen on getting real in the Colorado River Basin’ »
The Bureau of Reclamation Colorado River team did something remarkable in yesterday’s release of its new 5-year reservoir levels analysis – the “stress test”, a methodology pioneered a decade ago by an Upper Colorado River Basin technical team that included John Carron of Hydros and Eric Kuhn and Dave Kanzer of the Colorado River …
Continue reading ‘Taking climate change seriously: the Colorado River “stress test”’ »
Getting ready for class class discussion this afternoon about “drought” (“I get to see my students in person!” he exclaimed nervously.), I had occasion to check the latest Climate Prediction Center long lead forecast. It’s a few weeks old, but I don’t expect it’ll have changed much. The brownest blob captures both river basins I …