April 20, 2010, I took a drive that changed my life. Around the back of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Yuma Area Office, helped by a map hand-drawn by Jennifer McCloskey, then the Yuma Area Office manager, I headed up a dirt road onto the levee that borders the eastern edge of the Colorado River …
Continue reading ‘Ten years ago today, a drive down a Yuma levee that changed my life’ »
When I was writing Water is For Fighting Over five years ago, I built a little analytical model of Las Vegas water – projections of per capita demand and population growth, current patterns of water use and banking, risk to Colorado River water supply. At the time, the Southern Nevada Water Authority was aggressively pursuing …
Continue reading ‘Las Vegas abandons proposal to pump rural Nevada groundwater’ »
UNM Water Resources Program student Annalise Porter tipped me off to this, from Audubon’s Jennifer Pitt: At a time when the world feels bleak and uncertain, I want to share a sign of hope: it has been raining, and the Colorado River is flowing in its delta #CORiver ?@RaiseRiver? pic.twitter.com/6W8iRcvm3r — Jennifer Pitt (@JnPitt) …
Continue reading ‘Water flowing in the Colorado River Delta’ »
Jeff Kightlinger, who as head of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California since February 2006 has played a major role in Colorado River governance, announced today that he’ll be retiring at the end of the year.
By Eric Kuhn The Colorado River’s natural flows are shrinking by 9% per degree C (1.8 F) of warming as climate change continues to sap the river’s flow, according to an important new study by Chris Milly and Krista Dunne of the US Geological Survey. Milly and Dunne also conclude that increasing precipitation is unlikely …
Continue reading ‘How Dry was 2000-2018 on the Colorado Compared to “Normal”?’ »
By Eric Kuhn As the states of the Upper Colorado River Basin work through how to build a “demand management” account in their reservoirs to protect against shortages, water from retiring coal plants could play a crucial role. With few alternatives for use of the water, simply banking it in Upper Basin reservoirs is an …
Jian Wang and David E. Rosenberg at Utah State have put together an incredibly helpful compilation of past projections of Upper Colorado River Basin consumptive use, as compared to what then actually happened: When averaged over the long term, each scenario of future consumptive use over-estimated the observed consumptive use. Herein lies the space for …
Continue reading ‘We keep projecting that water use will go up. We keep mostly being wrong.’ »
[T]he anticommons refers to situations where there are numerous overlapping rights holders (or what might also be seen as numerous policy advocacy coalitions) each with some power to veto or block system or operation change. The tragedy emerges when the composite effect of such power prevents significant change in the system. – Jones, Benjamin A., …
Continue reading ‘Robert Moses, the Colorado River, and the tragedy of the anticommons’ »
OK, “strategy” is not exactly the right word here, but we take our water conservation where we can find it, eh? Luke Runyon took a nice dive into the water supply implications of the West’s wave of coal plant retirements. Because coal plants use water. Here’s my coauthor Eric Kuhn on the implications: “As a …
Continue reading ‘Retiring coal plants as a Colorado River Basin demand management strategy’ »
All the places New Mexicans get their water via winter snowpack – headwaters of Rio Grande, Colorado River, and the Pecos – are forecast to see expanding or persisting drought through the spring.