We’re beginning to see details of a pilot program to conserve water in the Colorado River Basin to prop up declining water levels in the basin’s major reservoirs by paying water users to not use water. The Southern Nevada Water Authority’s board last week approved that agency’s $2 million contribution to what would be a …
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One of the epic Colorado River stories involves the Great El Niño of 1983, the year they almost lost Glen Canyon Dam. With a massive snowpack melting off in a hurry in June of that year, Lake Powell filled to the spillways, which couldn’t handle the load, and it is said we came close to catastrophe. …
This is my favorite border picture from my trip last month to Arizona-California-Sonora-Baja. You can see the old border fence on the right, one of those repurposed metal landing strip things, which as near as I can tell is where the actual border is. The big new fence is pulled back 50 yards or so …
I’ve apparently got more time on my hands than skill, but I figured out, somewhat crudely, how to downland LANDSAT maps and make some pictures. Here’s the largely dry bed of the Colorado River on February 27. Apologies for the large file size, but it should have enough resolution to click and zoom if you’re …
When I set up a Google News alert some years ago on the words “Colorado River”, I noticed a revealing pattern. In spring, as the weather warmed, the water management and drought news I was hoping for was increasingly mixed with stories of drunk people drowning in the river. In the fall the mix of drunks …
The Colorado River pulse flow, three weeks in:
Sandra Postel on the experience of watching water return to the Colorado’s sandy delta bed, again and again: For me, some of the most powerful experiences have come from visiting the same location twice – before the river got there, and then again after its arrival. One morning, we visited a dry, sun-baked, sand-filled channel …
To Colorado Basin water nerds’ favorite question – What’s Pat up to? – we have an answer. According to the Las Vegas Sun, former Las Vegas water czar Pat Mulroy is joining the Brookings Mountain West project: Robert Lang, director of Brookings Mountain West, said the shrinking Colorado River is one of the most critical …
A couple of weeks back, I made a quickie bar graph to provide some context for the amount of water involved in the Colorado River Delta pulse flow. It was half-assed. A reader asked for more: “Would love it more if it included other things, like Las Vegas consumption, MWD consumption, UB pasture irrigation, and …