On the scale of Colorado River water diversions yet unbuilt, the possibility of taking water out of the Gila River in southwestern New Mexico is small stuff – 14,000 acre feet per year, or maybe less if the water’s simply not there. But the current debate in New Mexico illustrates a common refrain as western …
Continue reading ‘USBR: Gila diversion costs exceed benefits’ »
Water released from Lake Mead, through Hoover Dam’s turbines, travels downstream about 150 miles to Lake Havasu. There, massive pumps on the river’s left bank push the water up on the start of a 336 mile journey that ends in groundwater spreading basins west of Tucson. The Colorado River’s water then recharges an aquifer, where …
Most of the land in these reservations is and always has been arid. If the water necessary to sustain life is to be had, it must come from the Colorado River or its tributaries. It can be said without overstatement that when the Indians were put on these reservations they were not considered to be …
Continue reading ‘Annals of Indian water: “hot, scorching sands”’ »
From this morning’s Albuquerque Journal: “You’ve got to deal with people, farmers, companies, everyone,” Sandra Postel told me last week when I asked about the work she’s doing trying to find environmentally sustainable solutions to western North America’s water problems. In other words, you’ve got to cooperate.
While all eyes have been on Lake Mead’s bathtub ring, Lake Powell is forecast to rise by nearly 1.4 million acre feet by the end of September. But Mead’s 2 million acre foot drop will more than offset the increase, leaving us with the lowest end-of-year total storage in the two reservoirs combined since 1967, …
Continue reading ‘Total storage behind Hoover, Glen Canyon Dams’ »
Michael Campana offers some cautions about over-interpreting what the Castle et al. paper on the loss of Colorado River Basin groundwater is telling us. It’s a question of stocks versus flows. The GRACE measurements that have gotten such extensive attention can tells us the latter, but not the former: Why is such a number – …
Continue reading ‘Michael Campana on stocks, flows, and Colorado River Basin groundwater research’ »
The Bureau of Reclamation this evening sent out its official public announcement of the Colorado River System Conservation Program. The program has been simmering for months (see here, here and here for previous public discussions), but this evening’s announcement marks the final signing of the deal by federal officials. The program is a partnership of …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River System Conservation Program gets formal green light’ »
Since groundwater is a local resource, solutions to its runaway depletion will likely be local too. That is Sarah Jane Keller, from a High Country News piece on the Castle et al. paper on groundwater depletion in the Colorado River Basin.
The Imperial Irrigation District has more Colorado River water than anyone else. That has put them at the center of every major Colorado River Basin conversation about the transfer of agricultural water to urban users, including a particularly dramatic bit of brinksmanship going on in the fall of 2002. The other states of the basin …
Continue reading ‘Annals of ag-urban transfers: Imperial Valley, December 2002’ »
I think the answer to my rhetorical question in this post’s headline is obviously “no”. I think this is enormously useful data. But I’m still puzzling over who beyond clickbaiting bloggers like myself might use it, and how. In his coverage of the GRACE Colorado Basin groundwater depeletion, Brett Walton at Circle of Blue included …