It’s a nuance, but of such subtleties are progress often made. In the Bureau of Reclamation’s new “Moving Forward” report on the future of the Colorado River Basin, a subtle change to the bureau’s canonical map: There, at the bottom. See that little bit poking down into Mexico? That’s the Colorado River Delta. The Bureau’s …
The long awaited “Moving Forward Phase 1” report on opportunities for managing water in the Colorado River Basin plopped into public view this afternoon. I’m going to use the prerogative of a journalist no longer beholden to daily deadlines to wait until I’ve actually had time to review and think about the 448 page report about …
Continue reading ‘A window of opportunity to move the Colorado River dialogue forward’ »
With critics saying there’s no way New Mexico can get 14,000 acre feet of water from the Gila River, as promised in the Arizona Water Settlements Act, Avelino Maestas reports that state officials are talking about a second diversion, on the San Francisco: The Gila River may not be able to supply the 14,000 acre …
Pat Mulroy in the Las Vegas Sun on the interconnected west-wide artificial watershed we’ve built for ourselves, and why efforts to solve the Sacramento Delta’s problems matter to the rest of us: From the vantage point of Sacramento, the Colorado River may seem distant and disconnected to the challenges in the delta. Yet, the two …
Continue reading ‘Mulroy: We’ve built one giant watershed’ »
update: Jeff Lukas, in the comments, notes that I missed something important, which is the distinction between statewide averages and the east-west precip divide. As he correctly points out, that statewide blob of wet-looking Colorado hides the fact that it’s been extremely wet to the east, and relatively dry west of the continental divide. Here’s …
Continue reading ‘Warm in the West, but not as dry as you might have thought’ »
Arizona lawyer Grady Gammage, a member of that state’s water establishment, opened a conference I attended last week with an explanation of why he became so engrossed in trying to understand “the Law of the River,” that bundle of laws and customs that govern the management and distribution of the waters of the Colorado River. …
Continue reading ‘The Code of the Pirates and the Law of the River’ »
The National Park Service with a warning for Lake Mead boaters as the big reservoir, a recreational favorite outside Las Vegas, drops to record lows: From the Park Service’s Lake Mead facebook page
I sent Lissa a picture from the Arizona side overlook of Hoover Dam this evening. Her response: “You can almost see its feet.” I drove out from Las Vegas to see Lake Mead and Hoover Dam this evening after a two-day Colorado River law and policy conference in a windowless hotel meeting room. Speaker after …
While we’ve all been obsessing over the elevation of Lake Mead, there’s a second looming lake elevation problem that could really complicate Colorado River management and increases the risk of a 2016 Arizona shortage declaration beyond the current estimates. Depending on how things play out over the next couple of months, this second problem could …
Tony Davis reports the Bureau of Reclamation’s latest model runs up the odds of a 2016 Lower Basin shortage declaration to one in three: The odds of a shortage in water deliveries to Arizona and other Lower Colorado River Basin states in 2016 are now 33 percent, up from 21 percent as predicted in January, …
Continue reading ‘Risk of Colorado River shortage declaration rising’ »