David Zetland posted on the Salton Sea today, arguing that we should just give it up: Today’s Salton “Sea” is NOT natural. It’s replenished by irrigation runoff, of dubious quality. As water evaporates, it leaves behind higher concentrations of salts and other nasty stuff. Time to dry out the Salton Toilet, clean up the mess …
Pat Mulroy on how Las Vegas (Nevada) plans to meet its long term water needs – desal! I know, I know, you’re saying, “But don’t you have to be by, like, an ocean or something?” Here’s the scheme: build big desal plant down on the Gulf of California, give that water to Mexico to meet …
Continue reading ‘Pat Mulroy on How Vegas Plans to Do It: Desal, Baby!’ »
From Shaun McKinnon, a must-read story for water geeks on Arizona’s thinking about its water future – specifically where to get more (or use less?): Drop 2 is no Lake Mead, the huge reservoir outside Las Vegas that holds Colorado River water until cities and farms in Arizona, Nevada and California need it. The new …
It’s far too early in the season to draw any conclusions regarding 2010 runoff. The first serious forecasts don’t come out until January, and with months of snowmaking weather still to come, no one takes the January forecast terribly seriously. But this is a blog, so I won’t let that stop me. Currently, the NRCS …
John Wesley Powell famously argued in the 19th century that the West’s political jurisdictions should be shaped around watersheds, rather than the often arbitrary rectangles that had been used to establish our governmental geometry as the nation moved across the great plains. In an odd sort of way, we seem to be carrying out Powell’s …
Emily Green had some kind words for my book in the LA Times: Many texts about climate change begin with rapidly melting polar ice, but Fleck’s opens instead with the 19th century explorer John Wesley Powell and his navigation of the Colorado River. Ferociously wild in Powell’s time, the Colorado is tamed by dams and …
Continue reading ‘Chance of Rain Reviews “Tree Rings’ Tale”’ »
Michael Gardner has a nice summary of what’s at stake in the litigation blocking the complex deal under which California agrees to throttle back its use of Colorado River water: Southern California’s water managers insist it should be easy to overcome the latest challenge to a landmark, seven-state pact to share the Colorado River that …
It remains too early to say a whole lot about what to expect in the 2009-2010 water year on the Colorado River, but the odds of extra water to buck up Lake Mead are dropping. Last month, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation put the chances at 50-50 that there would be enough water in Lake …
From this morning’s newspaper: Here in the Southwest, the question of whether we can trust climate science — not the few scientists involved in the e-mails, but the enterprise as a whole — matters a great deal because of what the science’s leading practitioners have been telling us in recent years. Tucked away in a …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: E-Mails Don’t Put Water in the Colorado River’ »
AP is reporting this evening that a state judge in California has thrown out the 2003 deal by which California agreed to stop using so damn much Colorado River water: A California judge has tentatively invalidated a landmark pact to curtail the state’s overuse of water and allow other Western states to claim their fair …
Continue reading ‘Judge Throws Monkey Wrench Into California Water’ »