Colorado has no plans to make additional cuts to water use next year to meet the Bureau of Reclamation’s demand to conserve millions of acre-feet of water, a step needed to preserve power production in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Instead, Colorado officials insist that other states should do the cutting. “I think that at …
When Eric and I converge on a meeting, there’s always the “Are you gonna bring a bike?” conversation. This week it’s the Getches-Wilkinson Center’s Annual Colorado River conference, and the bike ride was a loop around Denver Water’s Dillon Reservoir, on the Blue River. It’s nearly full. The creeks feeding it were running. There was …
Continue reading ‘With Eric Kuhn’s help, I found a (nearly) full Colorado River Basin reservoir!’ »
I’ll let Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlin Touton explain this: In the Colorado River Basin more conservation and demand management are needed in addition to the actions already underway. Between 2 and 4 million acre feet of additional conservation is needed just to protect critical elevations in 2023. (emphasis added) That’s what Commissioner Touton …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck With a single statement, the United States Supreme Court changed the direction and tone of the compact negotiations: [T]he waters of an innavigable stream rising in one state and flowing into a state adjoining may not be disposed of by the upper state as she may choose, regardless of …
Cities. Farms. The natural environment. All of it. We can do it in an orderly way, or devolve into chaos. That’s it. That’s the blog post.
It has become a Frequently Asked Question of late here at Inkstain World Headquarters: John, you’ve frequently been quoted in the past expressing optimism about the future of the Colorado River Basin. Dude, Lake Mead is so low they’re finding dead bodies. Are you still optimistic? My answer, of course, is “yes”. It’s in my …
Continue reading ‘Sure, dead bodies in Lake Mead, whatever. I remain optimistic.’ »
Important observation from Jack Schmidt, Utah State Colorado River guy, on the new constraints on Colorado River management as Lake Powell and Lake Mead drop: “We’re in crisis management, and health and human safety issues, including production of hydropower, are taking precedence,” said Jack Schmidt, director of the center for Colorado River Studies at Utah …
Continue reading ‘Crisis Managemnent on the Colorado River’ »
Audubon’s Jennifer Pitt, one of the most stubbornly optimistic actors in the Colorado River Basin, wrote this Friday: [F]ederal officials project that within two years, the water level in Lake Powell could be so low that it would be impossible for water to flow through the dam’s turbine intakes. When that happens, it’s clear the …
Watching the back-and-forth among the U.S. Department of Interior and the seven Colorado River Basin States over Glen Canyon Dam operations over the last few months, I’d been thinking that we’ve dropped into an area where the rules developed in 2007, and tweaked in the years since, no longer apply. In short, if we use …
By Eric Kuhn For years, the Colorado River management community has ignored, or at the very least sidestepped, a problem that has effectively sent more Upper Basin water downstream to help fill Lake Mead. But with the reservoir system operating on razor-thin margins, this “bonus water” – seeping through the sandstone cliffs of Glen Canyon, …
Continue reading ‘Time to rethink the Upper Basin’s “Bonus Water” contributions to Lake Mead?’ »