I’m excited to join an “I’m not worthy” sort of group at Stanford’s Lane Center who share a common interest in our changing West. My piece of the problem is water management. My initial contribution touches on my cautious optimism about long term institutional management issues on the Colorado River – some success in recent …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Bending the Law of the River’ »
Water’s never really wasted. It always goes somewhere and does something. See, for example, the lining of the Coachella Canal, on the northeast side of the Salton Sea: [L]eakage from the unlined Coachella Canal recharged local aquifers. Wetlands have expanded due to spring discharge below the canal. Wetlands were natural features prior to canal construction, …
A new study out today from the Pacific Institute of municipalities’ water use in the Colorado Basin has some good news and some bad news from a basin-wide perspective. Per capita water consumption in the basin’s cities is down: Almost every one of the water agencies included in the study experienced declines in per capita …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Cities’ water use in the Colorado Basin’ »
This ran last week in the Albuquerque Journal, while I was on the road, sorry for the late bloggage (sub/ad req). From the Natural Resources Law Center’s Navigating the Future of the Colorado River conference, it’s a riff on how this year’s big snowpack buys a bit of time for the hard discussions to come …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere – Buying Time on the Colorado’ »
If you’re into nice round numbers (or live in Las Vegas and like drinking water coming out of your tap), keep hitting reload over here – Lake Mead’s elevation is about to cross 1,100 feet above sea level for the first time since – oh, was it only April 2010? Meanwhile, upstream at Lake Powell: …
SACRAMENTO – Marc Reisner famously called the Colorado River “the most legislated, most debated and most litigated river in the entire world.” As for the “most litigated,” U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Michael Connor last week said wants to hand the plaque over to California. “I’m going to shift the title to the Bay-Delta region,” …
The headline message in the first iteration of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado Basin supply-demand study is “9 percent”: Under the Downscaled GCM Projected scenario, the mean natural flow as measured at Lees Ferry over the next 50 years is projected to decrease by approximately 9 percent, along with a projected increase in both drought …
I’m headed up to Boulder this week for the University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center’s “Navigating the Future of the Colorado River” conference (more from John McChesney here), then off from there to Sacramento and the Bay Area (with the kind support and assistance of Stanford’s Lane Center) to learn more about California’s water …
John McChesney has posted a great interview with Pat Mulroy, head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, about future directions for Colorado River management. She’s the most vocal proponent for mechanisms that might allow sharing of shortages among water users across the Colorado River basin, rather than a strict prior appropriation approach where junior users …
Continue reading ‘Mulroy: We don’t need to tear up the compact’ »
One of the strangest western water projects of recent years is the Drop 2 Reservoir on the All-American Canal. Here’s the problem. Irrigators in southeastern California, mostly in the Imperial Valley, get their water from the Colorado River. It sits in storage behind Lake Mead, and when they need it, they put in a request …