Archive of posts filed under the Colorado River category.
There will be no Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan before the end of the Obama administration
“We are not going to get the Drought Contingency Plan completed.” That was the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s Jeff Kightlinger this morning during the opening panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting in Las Vegas. It was a very public expression of something that has been increasingly clear in recent weeks …
How Arizona plans to help reduce the pressure on Lake Mead
With the Colorado River water management community converging on Las Vegas this week, we are likely to learn more about whether or when we’ll see a deal on the long-awaited “Drought Contingency Plan” to reduce Lower Basin use of water from Lake Mead. Under the DCP, which has been in nearly final form for the …
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the resilience of Las Vegas and water
When I was writing my book, I wanted to talk about water use in cities through the story of a single city, and I chose Las Vegas (Nevada, not the one in New Mexico) intentionally as a rhetorical device. One of the writer’s tricks is to start readers on familiar terrain and lead them to …
Is Colorado River water responsible for 15 percent of U.S. crops?
I’ve seen this more than once: Fifteen percent of all U.S. crops are grown with irrigation water that originates in the Colorado River Basin. That’s from an Alternet piece, and it’s a number I’ve seen repeated many times (see here, here, here for just a few of the many examples). I am skeptical. I’ve been unable …
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On the importance of getting the boundaries right in water management and governance
I’m working this weekend on two talks, one a webinar Wednesday with Audubon and the other a lecture for UNM Water Resources grad students Thursday, that both touch on one of the fundamental challenges in getting water management right – the question of how we draw the boundaries, both geographically but also conceptually – around …
talking water cooperation this morning on Colorado Public Radio
I’ll be on Colorado Public Radio this morning (Mon. 11/21/16) sometime around 10:30 a.m. mountain time, talking about the importance of water conservation and collaboration. CPR’s Rachel Estabrook, who spent some time talking with me last week about my book, did a nice writeup ahead of the interview: To avoid federally mandated cutbacks, Arizona, Nevada …
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NAFTA and the Colorado River
With campaign rhetoric suggesting the likelihood of a changing relationship with Mexico, it is worth asking how a Trump administration might influence ongoing binational collaborations on the Colorado River. The important caveat here is that, as one of my friends put it in the days after the election, we chose Door Number Two on Nov. …
On the brink of a major deal to reduce Colorado River water use
A sweeping deal to reduce Lower Colorado River Basin water use will get its most detailed public airing to date at tomorrow’s (Nov. 7, 2016) meeting of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s Water Planning and Stewardship Committee. If the deal goes through – and there are hurdles yet to clear – Arizona, California, …
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We’re already in a Colorado River “shortage”, we just don’t call it that
As Bruce Finley notes in today’s Denver Post, we are on the brink of the first shortage declaration on the Colorado River: The next president could be faced with ordering a first-ever reduction in water siphoned from the river by 333,000 acre feet next August, a report by the Colorado River Future Project contends. That’s …
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