I spent some time this morning crunching numbers, trying to make numerical sense of how bad this year is on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande. We keep saying it’s only the second time the Rio Grande has dried through Albuquerque since the 1980s, but that felt insufficient. Some data visualization experiments: By this measure – …
Continue reading ‘Driest on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande since when? 1972? 1964?’ »
By John Fleck, Anne Castle, Eric Kuhn, Jack Schmidt, Kathryn Sorensen, and Katherine Tara As we await Friday’s (Aug. 15, 2025) release of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River 24-Month Study, we need to remember a painful lesson of the last five years of crisis management: whatever you see in Reclamation’s report of the “Most …
Continue reading ‘Awaiting the Colorado River 24-Month Study’ »
WHIDBEY ISLAND – It’s a five minute walk to the beach from the place we’re staying on Whidbey Island. It’s a pebbly beach, not like the soft sands of Oxnard where I first met (and in one case, fell in love with) the folks around me this week. Time has lifted and moved us, depositing …
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling …
And what if it is love one is trying to understand, that strange unmanageable phenomenon or form of life, source at once of illumination and confusion, agony and beauty? Love, in its many varieties, and their tangled relations to the good human life, to aspiration, to general social concern? What parts of oneself, what method, …
Formed in a series of volcanic eruptions between 1 and 2 million years ago, the Jemez Mountains dominate the cultural and environmental history of central New Mexico. For more than four decades, forest ecologist Craig Allen has studied them, engaging in what has come to be known as “place-based ecology,” with deep roots in what …
Continue reading ‘Craig Allen joins us on the Utton Center’s Water Matters! podcast’ »
If you have ever been to modern San Marcial, New Mexico – or what is left of it – the notion of an 86-pound catfish requires some explanation. The spot where D.C. George hooked his record catfish is today ragged scrubland. But for a brief, shining, extremely odd period of time in the 1940s and …
Continue reading ‘The 86-pound catfish of Lake San Marcial’ »
University of Arizona economist Bonnie Colby on why the enduring opposition to water transfers out of agriculture goes beyond price: This is not surprising given third party economic effects when irrigated agriculture diminishes in a region. However, the enduring nature of the opposition is striking, even when seemingly generous compensation is included for third party …
With the latest Bureau of Reclamation model runs highlighting the serious risks posed by the declining reservoir levels that Utah State’s Jack Schmidt has been warning about, there are signs that the closed-room discussions among the seven basin states, after brief glimmers of hope last month, are once again not going well. The Reservoirs The …
Continue reading ‘Return of the Deadpool Diaries: The Colorado River news keeps getting worse’ »
From USBR Albuquerque office chief Jennifer Faler’s report to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board yesterday (Monday, July 14, 2025). The USBR Albuquerque office has, on paper, a full staffing contingent of 200 FTEs. That’s on paper. Operationally, the actual levels in the past generally hovered around 175. Current staffing level sits at 117 …