This observation from the first draft of next year’s U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Colorado River Annual Operating Plan should come as no surprise: Inflow to Lake Powell has been below average in nine of the past eleven years (2000-2010). Although slightly above average inflows occurred in 2005 and 2008, drought conditions in the Colorado River Basin persist. …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: Up to Driest 11 years on the Colorado’ »
At the end of the beneficent water year of 1983, Lake Mead, the giant reservoir behind Hoover Dam that manages water for the benefit of Nevada, Arizona and California, held 25.7 million acre feet of water. At the end of water year 2010, according to the latest forecast, there will be less water than that …
David Zetland calls the cost of desalination the “backstop price” for water. Once the cost of other sources rises sufficiently, coastal residents will just build desal plants because it’s cheaper. While the fungibility is not complete (i.e. we don’t all live on coasts), water trades could allow people who live inland to play too. This …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: Huntington Beach, CA, Poseidon Desal’ »
Given the remarkable role of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in western U.S. water history, it’s at least of symbolic importance that the church is among those who have filed protests against Las Vegas, Nevada’s proposal to build a pipeline to pump water from the Snake Valley to the growing gambling …
The June 1 Colorado Basin forecasts are out, and, as expected, there’s been no miracle. The inflow into Lake Powell looks pretty much exactly like it did a month ago, minus the chance of a miraculous late snow rescue or the flip side chance of some sort of terrible collapse: The blue bar is average, …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: 2010 snow season all over save the melting’ »
The surface of Lake Mead is at 1094.30 feet above sea level, the lowest June 1 reading since 1937, when it was first being filled. All I can say is it could be worse. That’s six inches higher than the forecast in the most recent 24-Month Study, the planning document used by the U.S. Bureau …
Kudos to the University of San Diego’s Watchdog Institute for producing, and to the Imperial Valley Press for running, an excellent look at what’s at stake in the upcoming Imperial Irrigation District election. IID, the irrigation agency formed in 1911 to take over the interests of commercial water developers on the California side of the …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: “This makes ‘Chinatown’ look like high school.”’ »
The JAWRA blog had a post Friday on something that I’ve found maddeningly difficult to explain to newspaper readers: the cases where water conservation efforts don’t really save the water one intuitively thinks they do: Lining a canal, for example, may seem like “saving” water, but not if the leakage is replenishing a stressed aquifer. …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: When Saving Water is Not What It Seems’ »
When the Colorado River Compact was negotiated in 1922 to divide the river’s flow among the seven western U.S. states that span its basin, the representatives of the upper basin states were driven by the realization that they weren’t using much water at the time, but some day they would want to. Under western U.S. …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: The View From the Head of the Stream’ »