Water, apparently for fighting over after all
.@VP Kamala Harris: "For years and generations, wars have been fought over oil. In a short matter of time, they will be fought over water." pic.twitter.com/88pWzvbmeA — The Hill (@thehill) April 7, 2021
Archive of entries posted by jfleck
Rio Grande so low I needed to switch to log scale
I mostly hate log scale in graphs I use for broad communication purposes. It’s just not intuitive. But I’ve made the switch for this year’s Rio Grande, because the flows are so low that we need the log scale, because at really low flows small changes become big, if that makes any sense. The difference …
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Diatoms of Albuquerque’s Rio Grande
My friend and colleague Becky Bixby (UNM biologist, associate director of the UNM Water Resources Program) gave a great talk recently about her work on the diatoms – little light-eating algae – on the margins of our river. (first 10-ish minutes is Becky)
New Mexico’s Rio Grande: Last year bad, this year worse
An email exchange with a friend who helps manage New Mexico’s water led to the graph above, my first stab at a visualization to try to show the accumulation of two bad years’ flow on the Rio Grande. Not quite sure this does all the work yet that I need of it, but perhaps worth …
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Some data on a bad year on New Mexico’s Rio Grande
No sooner did my spring break begin a week ago (quite literally within a couple of hours of the end of my last class before break) than I got sick. This has led to much laying around, and resting, which I think was the point? I’m finally on the mend, and a friend got me …
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I said some things about Utah and the Colorado River
The AP’s Sophia Eppolito did a nice job of pulling a single bit of business from a lengthy interview that captured the key point of my thoughts on Utah’s approach to Colorado River governance and water management: The river supplies Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Mexico as well as a $5 …
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Water Wars – What are they Good For? Webinar, March 15
I’ll be joining Tim Quinn, former executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies; and Tracy Quinn, Director, California Urban Water Policy, Healthy People & Thriving Communities Program at the NRDC (and also a board of of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California) in a webinar to talk about collaboration and conflict around …
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Together Again
My sister, Lisa, and I had an amusing exchange this morning as we drove home from the funeral home with Mom’s ashes. She was pretty sure I had Dad’s ashes at my house, but I had no memory of where we’d stashed them. That’s the way it has ever been between us – she’s the …
The dogs of the cul-de-sacs of Albuquerque’s South Valley
Apologies that I don’t have any pictures of the dogs. Via the wonderful Wandrer, I’ve been playing a new cycling game that involves trying to ride on all the streets. For a modest fee, you can connect Wandrer to a cloud-stored archive of all your GPS-recorded bike rides, and it’ll keep keep track of which …
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The problem of expectations
Felicia Marcus on the West’s water problems: The problem with vast water negotiations like the Colorado River Compact, said Marcus, the Stanford water policy expert, is that every entity, from governments down to people watering their lawns, come to expect the current amount of available water — even if that availability is an outlier or …