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 …
Ian James at The Desert Sun has a great Sunday paper deep dive into the stress climate change is placing on Lower Colorado River Basin water, including this observation from John Entsminger, Las Vegas’s new water chief, on the money needed to pursue the solution space: Entsminger, whose Las Vegas water agency is backing the …
Last night, I shared Part I of an interesting discussion by Arizona water managers of the risk facing Lake Mead and Lower Colorado River Basin water users in Nevada, Arizona and California: Absent some big wet years or management intervention, Lake Mead could drop to levels in the next five to eight years that would …
Continue reading ‘What it will take to fix Lake Mead – the Arizona suggestion’ »
update: see also Part II, discussing Arizona’s suggestion regarding what it might take to fix this problem Absent some big wet years or management intervention, Lake Mead could drop to levels in the next five to eight years that would make it nearly unusable – especially for power generation and water for Las Vegas, but …
After spending the day reading about the federal government’s, shall we say, persuasive role in assisting Imperial Valley farmers that it was in their best interests to figure out a way to share a bit of their water across San Gorgonio Pass with the city folk to their west, I this evening ran across this: …
Continue reading ‘In western water, what’s the right role for the feds?’ »
If I wanted to make mischief, I’d write a blog post pointing out that Lake Mead ended May at a historic low right after release of 105,392 acre feet of water for a historic environmental flow through the Colorado River Delta. I’d calculate how much higher Lake Mead would be if that 105,392 acre feet …
Continue reading ‘That thing I wrote about Lake Mead being the lowest ever turned out to be true’ »
Black Canyon on the Colorado River, from the 1871 Wheeler survey, courtesy USGS. This is the area eventually chosen some years later for what was called Boulder or Hoover Dam:
Unless tropical depression Amanda does something miraculous, and quickly, Lake Mead will end May at its lowest level for this point in the year since Elwood Mead and his buddies filled the reservoir in the 1930s, 20 feet in surface elevation below last year at this time. The “tropical storm Amanda” thing was a joke. …
Continue reading ‘Lake Mead: lowest end-of-May levels in history’ »
I suppose if you work this image from yesterday’s Landsat pass over the Colorado River Delta hard enough, you could find a path of wet connection between river and sea: Image courtesy USGS Earth Explorer