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 …
Continue reading ‘How Arizona plans to help reduce the pressure on Lake Mead’ »
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 …
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 …
Continue reading ‘Is Colorado River water responsible for 15 percent of U.S. crops?’ »
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 …
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 …
Continue reading ‘talking water cooperation this morning on Colorado Public Radio’ »
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. …
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, …
Continue reading ‘On the brink of a major deal to reduce Colorado River water use’ »
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 …
Continue reading ‘We’re already in a Colorado River “shortage”, we just don’t call it that’ »
People have been sharing pictures of my book as it travels to interesting places. This makes me so happy. Today Michael Thomas Bogan, desert fish and other aquatic critter researcher (don’t snicker, that’s a thing, desert fish are really important!) at the University of Arizona shared this one:
Folks in Nevada today are celebrating the 80th anniversary of Hoover Dam’s sort-of-semi-official power production. Hoover Dam is such a dominant feature on the history of the west in the 20th century that it’s fun to contemplate what people thought about it before it happened. One of my fascinating side trips when I was researching …
Continue reading ‘The unexpected history of Las Vegas and Hoover Dam’ »