The members of the Cattle and Horse Protective association of New Mexico, composed of men who are naturally deeply interested in a copious rainfall, believe that the Salton sea has given New Mexico a better climate. At any rate they want the matter investigated before Uncle Sam dykes up the Colorado river permanently. – Albuquerque …
Continue reading ‘When they thought the Salton Sea would bring New Mexico rain’ »
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck As the Colorado River Compact’s negotiators got down to work a century ago, their lack of curiosity about how much water the river might be able to provide began to emerge. Colorado’s Delph Carpenter understood that he represented the interests of a headwaters state. Four major rivers, including the …
Eric Kuhn and John Fleck In complex multi-party negotiations like the Colorado River Compact process, it is rare that major progress or breakthroughs happen during one of general sessions. Instead, real progress is more often made during the more candid discussions between smaller groups of negotiators during breaks, after-dinner discussions, and occasionally sub-committees. Most of …
Tony Davis had a great story in the Daily Star over the weekend on the allure of desalination of ocean water as Arizona struggles with shrinking Colorado River supplies. Tony’s excellent work on this question susses out the problems: ocean desal is costly, like really costly ocean desal is energy intensive, like really energy intensive …
Continue reading ‘Desalination, Arizona, and magical thinking’ »
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck Herbert Hoover’s words a century ago were chosen with care. Might it be possible, he wondered, for the state officials gathered around him that day “to agree upon a compact between the seven states of the Colorado Basin, providing for an equitable division of the water supply of the …
Continue reading ‘A century ago, Colorado River Compact negotiations begin’ »
A friend shared this, from the Sandia Lab News, circa 1955: New Dyke Will Give Salton Sea Test Base Protection Against Rapidly Rising Water The steadily rising water level of the Salton Sea in southern California is presenting a problem for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in seeking to safeguard test facilities operated by Sandia …
Continue reading ‘Back in the days when the Salton Sea was rising’ »
In the wake of a Colorado River Water Users Association meeting that was by turns exuberant (We got to see one another for the first time since the Before Times!) and stark (The reservoirs are nearly empty!), Anne Castle and I have a new paper out this week in a special issue of the journal …
Daniel Rothberg yesterday published a very helpful Q and A with John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada Water Authority that gets to the heart of one of the really important discussions now underway in the Colorado River Basin: Rothberg: You mentioned not that long ago, testifying in Congress, that “the river community is far from …
FYI all, I’ve deleted the post with the soil moisture map. It was dated 2020, not this year. That’s what get for enthusiastically curling up in my comfy chair with my new laptop and blogging while still on first cup of coffee.
One of the conceptual riddles Bob Berrens and I are working through in the new book we’re pursuing on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande, and the work surrounding it, is the ecosystem goods and services across our valley floor provided by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s web of irrigation ditches. Where once we had …
Continue reading ‘On the ecosystem benefits of irrigation systems’ »