In the latest High Country News, Stephen Elliott reports on the tribulations of the Paradox Valley desal unit run by the Bureau of Reclamation to help reduce salt load on the Colorado River: Without the unit’s deep injection, the salt that covers the desert valley floor at Paradox, and the thousands of tons of it …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River salinity program showing its age’ »
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., had a go at Deputy Interior Secretary Mike Connor during a Senate hearing last week, looking for assurances that if his state left unused water in Lake Mead as part of a Colorado River Basin conservation effort, the Interior Department wouldn’t just kype it and give it to someone else (mumble …
Continue reading ‘Arizona, water conservation, and the tragedy of the “paracommons”’ »
In response to reader feedback, here’s my depressing graph of current Lake Mead storage, adapted to be readable on your mobile phone. Yes, there are people now who prefer their bad news on the go! More background here.
It’s one of those milestones that’s an entirely arbitrary result of the units we use to measure, but it’s probably nevertheless worth marking: for the first time since it was filled in the 1930s, Lake Mead ended the “water year” below 10 million acre feet of storage. The finally elevation at midnight last Wednesday, Sept. …
From his Sept. 30, 1935 speech dedicating what was then called “Boulder Dam,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes: I venture to hope that this dam, with its great storage of health and wealth and happiness for thousands of people, will stand as a definite opening of a new era with respect to the natural …
From an interesting Sammy Roth interview with former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar: Q: In Southern California, water managers often say they don’t have to worry about losing access to Colorado River water, because of the state’s “senior” water rights. During an extreme shortage, they believe, Arizona and Nevada would lose much of their river water …
Continue reading ‘Ken Salazar on California’s senior rights to Colorado River water’ »
The century just ended will be recognized as the time when America’s water resources were attacked with all of the sophistication and power that one would expect of an economic and technological superpower. Unruly rivers were straightened and channelized , massive levees and dikes were thrown in the way of encroaching water, cheap electricity was …
Southern Nevada Water Authority crews pulled the end cap off of the agency’s new, deeper Lake Mead intake today, and by this weekend they’ll be pumping water from the new system. This is a major milestone in a system that, when completed, provides critical water management breathing room for the entire Colorado River Basin. Theorists of …
Continue reading ‘Resilience, and pulling the cap on the new Las Vegas Lake Mead intake’ »
Southern California water policy is looking like a game of speed chess right now. Amid the moves to supplement its Colorado River flow with extra water from Las Vegas and Imperial (agenda pdf), Met’s board also is considering spending money on cleaning up and reusing more of the sewage effluent Southern California currently dumps in …
Continue reading ‘Met eyeing sewage recycling for Southern California supply’ »
From the Paris Review, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s journal of his 1961 visit to El Centro and the Salton Sea: Even at the Salton Sea, the face of death has its smile. In the morning the wind is still blowing but the sun is bright, and life is stirring. Even at the bottom of a well, there’s …
Continue reading ‘That time Lawrence Ferlinghetti visited the Salton Sea’ »