The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District Board this afternoon (Monday Oct. 14, 2024) approved an agreement among the District, the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, and the Bureau of Reclamation for temporary storage of District water in Abiquiu Reservoir on the Rio Chama while El Vado Reservoir is out of comission. This is a …
Continue reading ‘MRGCD Board Approves Abiquiu Storage Deal’ »
Tree Spring Trail FTW.
Update: Data here is from USDA, the “USGS” in the graphs is a typo in the code I used to generate them, which I’m too lazy to fix. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2024 estimate of alfalfa acreage in New Mexico, 130,000 acres, is the lowest it’s been since the 1950s. Acreage is down 55 …
The Arizona Department of Water Resources has published a thoughtful and also delightfully testy response to Enduring Solutions on the Colorado River, the white paper Kathryn Sorensen et al. (I’m one of the et alias) published in August. First a reminder of our core premise: As we work to reduce water use on the post-2026 …
Water resources must be governed before they can be managed, and the crafting of governance institutions is an ongoing challenge of the human condition. Institutional artisanship requires the availability of tools for institutional design and creation, and a reflective understanding of the use of those tools. Yet neither the tools nor the understanding exist in …
Sept. 30 marks the end of the “water year,” an accounting milestone that gives us an opportunity to take stock. The change in total water storage year-over-year is one way to do this, to help understand if we took more water out of the reservoirs than the climate put in. The graph above is …
When John Oliver used some of my work in a piece about water a couple of years ago, I spent a long time with one of the show’s producers as they developed it. Then, right before it aired, I spent more time in an intense round of fact-checking. It was marvelous. They were fact-checking the jokes. …
Two years ago, when the level of Lake Mead was hovering near elevation 1,040, my artist wife Lissa Heineman and I drove out over UNM’s fall break to see it for ourselves. Out beyond the old Boulder Harbor, we walked a half mile across mud flats to get to the water. I could look out …
I tagged along Friday with my glass artist kiddo Nora on a trip to Bullseye Glass, an art supply store in Santa Fe. Nora makes stuff out of glass for their jewelry business, and needed to stock up. After a busy week, I needed to not work, and have fun instead. We went to our …
By Jack Schmidt The decrease in reservoir storage following the 2024 inflow season has been thankfully modest, but not as favorable as it was at this time last year. Perseverance reducing consumptive uses and losses is needed for reliability and security in the water supply and to regain reservoir storage. Between mid-April and early July …
Continue reading ‘The 2024-2025 Season of Water Consumption: Can We Retain Our Gains?’ »