Henry Brean has a story in this morning’s Las Vegas Review-Journal on the mess at the upper end of Lake Mead where the Colorado River used to empty out into a lake, dumping its sediment. Now that the lake level’s dropped, the river’s cutting back down through all that deposited glop, creating a new rapids: …
Some of my favorite water people like to point out that we don’t have a problem of water shortage here in the arid West, but rather a problem of water allocation. In the comments, the mysterious DG seems to be in that camp, offering this on what will happen when the Colorado comes up short: …
Continue reading ‘How Much Water Does the Colorado Really Have, Part II’ »
Pat Mulroy, head of the water authority that serves Las Vegas, Nev., lays out the problem: Today the Colorado River represents 90 percent of our water supply. Due to the severe drought, we are within three years of losing our upper intake in Lake Mead, which represents 40 percent of our water supply; if the …
I’m still new to the strange and wonderful ways of lower Colorado River management, so I was struck by the hilarity of this situation, as explained by Chris Brooks. Farmers order water, which takes several days’ river time to reach them. But then it rains, so they don’t need the water, so it flows down …
Compare and contrast. Tim Barnett, in this morning’s Albuquerque Journal: The Colorado River won’t have enough water to meet the West’s needs at least three out of every five years by mid-century if we do not move now to reduce our usage, according to a new study being published this week. “Current conditions are unsustainable,” …
Continue reading ‘How much water does the Colorado really have?’ »
More when I have time, but for now, since this is a blog and we’re supposed to be on top of things, some stuff I wrote elsewhere: The Colorado River will be too small to meet the needs of its users three years out of five, or more, by mid-century, according to new research. Some …
A discussion of the Colorado River over at Tom Yulsman’s blog led to a helpful post on the consumption side of the ledger: According to a 2008 study published in Water Resources Research (subscription required for full text), Lake Mead already is being overdrawn by 1 million acre feet of water per year.
Henry Brean, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, caught something remarkable in the latest monthly reservoir operations plan published by the Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado River region office. By next month, Lake Mead will drop below 1,100 feet above sea level in surface elevation – the first time it has dropped below that …
I only know what I read in the paper these days about the Metropolitan Water District, Southern California’s giant water wholesaler. But it sure looks from this LA Times story as though the Met is trying to use market mechanisms to impose a 10 percent reduction in deliveries: The Metropolitan Water District, which imports water …
Continue reading ‘Southern California Cutbacks: A Market Mechanism’ »
Aaron Million and his Wyoming-Colorado water pipeline idea have been around a while. They’re still here. I’m not inclined to pay a whole lot of credence to his idea of piping gobs of water from Wyoming to meet the demand in growing Front Range cities. But he’s still at it, having persuaded the feds to …