Archive of posts filed under the Colorado River category.

When do we stop calling what’s happening on the Colorado River “shortage”?

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Putting together a lecture for University of New Mexico Water Resources Program students tomorrow, I’ve been thinking about this quote from MWD’s Bill Hasencamp, in last week’s LA Times: “Basically, what the models say is that, in the future, most years will be shortage years,” said Bill Hasencamp, the manager of Colorado River resources for …

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Some optimistic words on the Colorado Basin from Doug Kenney

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The University of Colorado’s Doug Kenney is sounding genuinely optimistic in this recent take on the Colorado River’s problems over at Carpe Diem West: Throughout the basin, a lot of really good innovations are occurring. Conservation has, rightly, emerged as a credible management tool, and not merely something for the hippies to talk about. Cooperation …

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Lower Colorado Basin water savings not as big as I thought

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So I need to correct something that I wrote a month ago. Tony Davis took a deep dive into the Bureau of Reclamation’s data and concluded in a story published this morning (I think accurately) that water conservation savings in the Lower Colorado River Basin will not be as large as I and others have been …

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Absent deep water use cuts, repeat of the drought of 2000-05 would drain Lake Powell

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I’m generally an optimist about our ability to solve our water problems of the western United States, but the drought of 2000-05 provides a boundary condition to my thinking. In my post-journalism life, one of the most interesting projects I’ve been working on is a study for/by/with Colorado’s West Slope basin roundtables of the risks …

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River District Annual Water Seminar, Sept. 16 in Grand Junction

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The Colorado River District has a great agenda again this year for its annual Water Seminar:  “Colorado River Waves of the Future: Fitting the West to the River’s New Normal“. ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten is the lunch speaker, talking about his excelent “Killing the Colorado” series/documentary, which won special recognition award in this year’s Stanford Knight-Risser Prize …

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Book Day: Water is For Fighting Over, and Other Myths….

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My friends in the University of New Mexico water community, faculty and students, threw a party for me last night to welcome me as the new director of UNM’s Water Resources Program and celebrate Book Day Eve. A bunch of Albuquerque water people came too. It was a blast, nobody got drunk and trashed the …

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Lake Mead back above 1,075

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Apparently in celebration of this week’s official release date for my book Water is for Fighting Over: and Other Myths about Water in the West, Lake Mead overnight crept above the magic elevation level of 1,075 feet above sea level. That’s number attached in policy and, more importantly, the public mind to the notion of shortage on …

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The centennial of the National Park Service

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On its centennial, there is no question in my mind about the central role of the U.S. National Park Service in my life’s trajectory. I’ve written often about my experience as a young boy, standing on the Grand Canyon’s south rim, wandering the view spots craning my neck for those fragmentary vistas where you can …

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The solution to the West’s water problems

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If I go out and ride for an hour, my brain function after is definitely better. I like to think up creative water solutions when I’m riding. That’s John Currier, chief engineer of the Colorado River District in Glenwood Springs, in a fun story on the crazy bicycling habits of Currier and his colleagues Eric …

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