This is a picture of the downstream side of Morelos Dam, on the U.S. Mexico border west of Yuma, Ariz. I took it in March, when there was water flowing downstream, into Mexico. That is an unusual sight. This is usually the point where the Colorado River ends. It’s not entirely clear to me where …
tl;dr Vegas is an easy target, but Lake Mead’s problems involve far more than Sin City’s profligacy. Longer version: As Lake Mead drops toward a record low some time next month, there’s a temptation to draw a dotted line to the Bellagio Fountain, 30 miles to the west, and point a finger of blame. It’s …
If I was trying to manage water in California, these maps would give me the heebie-jeebies. It’s from a new paper (AGU-walled) by Zion Klos and colleagues extending our knowledge of the shift from snow to rain in the high country of the western United States as a result of warming temperatures. Here’s why this …
Continue reading ‘In the West, what used to be snow, falling as rain’ »
A century and a half ago, there was enough water in the Yuma stretch of the Colorado River to sink a steamboat: On this date in 1854, the first steamer on the Colorado River, The Uncle Sam, sank at Pilot Knob. Today, it’s pickups, stuck in the sand: Yuma Station agents patrolling near the Colorado …
Continue reading ‘Steamboats and pickup trucks in the Colorado River’ »
Preparing a talk I’m giving next week about Minute 319, the Colorado River environmental pulse flow and its broader implications for western water management, I ran across this new piece by environmental journalist Cesar Angulo about the mixed feelings in Mexico about the effort: According to Arroyo Gonzalez, these reforestation projects have a very positive …
Continue reading ‘South of the border, tension about highest and best use of Colorado River water’ »
Summer rains aren’t a big part of the Colorado River Basin’s water supply story, but they don’t hurt. So here’s an optimistic map, published this morning by the Climate Prediction Center: The more interesting maps are the long term ones: You can see that for the lower part of the Colorado River Basin (where I …
Michael Wines of the New York Times joins the discussion as Arizona officials continue to push their new message about the risk of shortage on the lower Colorado: Although experts have been aware for years that shortages would eventually occur, the analysis represents a marked turnabout in officials’ thinking. “We’re dealing with a very serious …
Continue reading ‘Arizona goes all in on its Lower Colorado risk move’ »
One more great tidbit from Tony Davis’s story today about Arizona’s water woes: Tucson Water customers have sharply scaled back water use. Total use sank to 1989 levels last year despite continued population growth, Wilson said.
tl;dr The idea of conserving water before enforcing shortages in the Colorado River Lower Basin, rejected by water managers less than seven years ago, seems now to be all but a given, though much remains to be worked out. longer: Tony Davis has an excellent story in this morning’s Arizona Star on what looks from …