When you cross a bridge, Craig Childs said at an American Rivers gathering in Santa Fe Friday evening, stop, and look down. A couple of llamas stared in what I imagine was puzzlement this morning as I dropped my bike and walked out onto the planks bridging one of the irrigation ditches in Albuquerque’s South …
I had a fascinating conversation this morning with the guy in the hat, who was out with his family fishing where the Middle Rio Grand Conservancy District’s Central Wasteway drops water out of the Albuquerque irrigation system, back into the Rio Grande. I’ve been bicycling to this bridge three or four times a week recently, …
The word value, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called value in use; the other, value in exchange. The things which have the greatest …
In the wake of Arizona’s difficulties in coming to terms with the future of central Arizona agriculture as it sorted out its approach to reducing Colorado River water use under the Drought Contingency Plan, the latest Census of Agriculture data is fascinating. The decline continues, but only just barely. The data within this data, broken …
Continue reading ‘Central Arizona ag’s decline continues, but Pinal County is up’ »
My co-author Eric Kuhn was in town over the weekend to finish up the copy edits for our upcoming book Science be Dammed, and happily we were not so busy that we didn’t have a chance to get in a couple of bike rides. (In our collaboration these last few years, “Are you going to …
From the inbox:
There is an Air Force Base on Albuquerque south side. It has contaminated our aquifer. The relationship between the community and the Air Force regarding cleanup has been rocky. More rocks:
Deep in the copy edits for our new book, Eric and I have stumbled into this minor obstacle: Mainstream, main stream, mainstem, or main stem??? The Supreme Court commonly used mainstream in its 1963 AZ v CA decision – Now Merriam-Webster appears to have taken the word away from rivers. @jfleck and I use …
My “job”, as director of the University of New Mexico Water Resources Program, requires me to pay close attention to New Mexico’s water. So of course when I saw this morning that the Rio Grande’s flow through Albuquerque had topped 2,500 cubic feet per second, I had to conduct “field work”. Anything above 2,300 cfs …
Continue reading ‘Morning bike ride – *totally* work related’ »
It’s important to be clear of what we mean by “waste” when we talk about “wasting” water. Because it’s always going someplace, and doing something. In Albuquerque, for example, we talk about reusing effluent from our sewage treatment plant. But we currently treat that water and put it back in the Rio Grande, where it …
Continue reading ‘The Ciénega de Santa Clara and the question of “waste”’ »