My on-again, off-again infatuation with 1083.57, the elevation Lake Mead reached in March 1956, is back on. As Shaun McKinnon reports in this morning’s Arizona Republic, Mead’s at the lowest it’s been since then. The latest “24-month study” from the Bureau of Reclamation (pdf), out this week, is back to forecasting that we’ll drop below …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: “We know that it’s being drained.”’ »
Between the USGS, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Library of Congress, Calisphere and others, there are so many great old Colorado River photos around that it’s easy to think the early history of the river’s development happened in black and white. I get lost in them. Today’s treasure is a photo from the 1923 Birdseye …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: LaRue and the Question of How Much Water There Really Was’ »
When I was in Vegas in April, I heard several talks on the way folks on Lake Mead engage in a practice they call “chasing water”. As the water storage reservoir recedes, the Park Service extends boat ramps farther and farther. The owners of the Las Vegas Marina, which used to sit up in Las …
You would think that on the over-appropriated Lower Colorado River, downstream from dwindling Lake Mead, getting by on less water would be a good thing. But this little news blurb from KXO radio in El Centro, in California’s Imperial Valley, suggests otherwise. The problem, apparently, is that the Imperial Irrigation District, the largest water rights …
Continue reading ‘The Imperial Irrigation District’s Problem – LA Might Get the Water!’ »
Michael Campana prodded me a bit this morning on Waterwired regarding a discussion happening here and elsewhere about the possibility of abandoning Phoenix as the place runs out of water. It’s a strong meme, and it comes up frequently among those who recognize the fragile nature of cities of the desert southwest as growth-fueled water …
Continue reading ‘Why I Don’t Think We’ll Abandon Phoenix’ »
update: An eagle-eyed friend points out that when I grabbed this from the original PowerPoint slide, I clipped off the X and Y axis legends. That’s time on the X axis – 1920ish to 2006, and millions of acre feet on the Y axis. xxxxx ‘Cause I love the old pictures, and since it came …
I report without comment reports of alligators in the Colorado River (Palisade is in western Colorado, just upstream from Grand Junction): Wednesday, a group of kids playing near the water at Riverbend Park raised the alarm when they say they spotted an alligator on the bank. They say their parents didn’t believe them, but a …
James Lawrence Powell concludes his otherwise excellent western water history Dead Pool with an apocalyptic vision of the abandonment of Phoenix, “a Grapes of Wrath-like exodus in reverse” as drought saps the Arizona city of its last reserves of water. It’s a vision I don’t buy (hence my “otherwise excellent” tag), because we won’t abandon …
The question of how much it rained or snowed is an important one in water management, but answering it is not trivial. The answer depends on a mix of remote sensing data, radar and rain gages (often data collected by volunteers). I got a helpful note yesterday from Jeff Lukas about a western precipitation map I …
At April’s “Implications of Lower Lake Levels” symposium, Brad Udall talked about the importance of the Australian example for the western United States. From 2000 to 2010, Udall said, parts of Australia experienced 40 to 50 percent reductions in river flow, which said has profoundly changed societal discussions about water. Australia’s “big dry” may be …
Continue reading ‘Is desal one lesson of Australia’s “big dry”?’ »