Eric and I will be doing a Webinar Jan. 22, sponsored by the American Water Resources Association: In their new book Science Be Dammed, Eric Kuhn and John Fleck explain how even when clear evidence was available that the Colorado River could not sustain ambitious dreaming and planning, river planners and political operatives irresponsibly made …
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Hunting through my photo archives for a reporter doing a piece on the new Eric Kuhn-John Fleck book, I found this old favorite – Yuma, one of my favorite places on the Colorado River.
Water policy folks in other western states may yawn at this, but in New Mexico it’s a big deal. The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer has approved the state’s first instream flow water right. Here’s a summary from Audubon, the group that put the deal together, explaining how it works. The deal would …
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I look forward every year to the annual gathering of the New Mexico Water Dialogue. It’s always a great meeting – the speakers etc. But even more so, it’s a great gathering of our version of “the network” – the diverse collection of folks across cultures and geographies in our state who understand the importance …
Continue reading ‘Building resilience in New Mexico water – Water Dialogue meeting, Jan. 9’ »
If past trends in greater Phoenix – agricultural land transitioning to urban – the area is on track to groundwater “safe yield”, according to new research by an Arizona State University team: Under (business as usual) conditions where population is expected to increase and agricultural activities to gradually decrease, our results indicate a reduction in …
The Imperial Irrigation District board will take up a resolution this afternoon drawing a sharp line. If action isn’t taken to deal with the Salton Sea, the historic early-2000s deal that attempted to untangle California’s Colorado River overallocation (the “Quantification Settlement Agreement” or QSA) “will have been breached”: The full text of the resolution and …
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The framing questions I’ve used for my work on water over the last decade go something like this: When the water runs short, who doesn’t get theirs? What does that look like? Those are the motivating questions behind a new paper Anne Castle and I have written. We’ve also added an increasingly important third question: …
Q: What does it take to win public acceptance of direct potable reuse of wastewater? A: “a daily lived experience with the effects of drought or water scarcity” That’s one of the key findings from a new paper I coauthored with a team led by the University of New Mexico’s Caroline Scruggs, working with Water …
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My friends at Island Press (an amazing outfit, so grateful to have had the chance to work with them) are offering all their titles, including Water is For Fighting Over, for 50 percent off right now. You of course already have your copy, but it’s a perfect holiday gift for that water nerd on your …
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My Colorado River policy attention time is a finite resource, and I admit I’ve not paid terribly close attention to Utah’s Lake Powell Pipeline proposal. My reasoning has been that it’s likely so expensive relative to the water it would provide that, with the end of big federal subsidies, Utah’s eventually going to wake up …
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