Pulse flow slows
The Colorado River pulse flow, three weeks in:
Archive of posts filed under the Colorado River category.
Postel on watching a river’s return
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 …
Mulroy joining Brookings
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 …
AMACRQ: Colorado River Use Bar Graph
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 …
Margaret Bowman on the Colorado Basin solution space
From an interesting talk last month by Margaret Bowman on a vision of what the Colorado River Basin solution space might look like (pdf of talk text here): [T]he region’s agricultural industry will be modernized with more efficient irrigation technologies. This modernization will not only increase the productivity of agriculture, but will also result in …
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Via Nature podcast, Alex Witze on the grand pulse flow experiment
If I’d done the geek stuff right, hit the play button below to hear a really nice piece by Alex Witze of Nature magazine from the Colorado River delta pulse flow. (I know, it’s a magazine, this is audio. Brave new world and all.) If I haven’t done the geek stuff right, you can probably …
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It now looks like 2017 is the earliest we could see a shortage declaration on the Colorado River
The latest Bureau of Reclamation monthly basin operating report, out today (the “24-month study”, pdf), makes it increasingly clear that we’re not going to see Lake Mead drop to levels that would require a shortage declaration in 2016. The shortage is based on Lake Mead’s surface elevation, and the trigger level is 1,075 feet above sea …
pulse flow progress
Courtesy of the folks at CILA, the Mexican boundary and water commission, the latest Colorado River pulse flow map shows water making it past the Laguna restoration sites in the Colorado River delta, continue its slow push toward the Sea of Cortez:
In Las Vegas, an acknowledgment that growth is gone
You can’t understand water in the west without understanding urban growth patterns. They’re joined at the hip. Here, in a single graph, is the explanation for the Vegas announcement yesterday that its two main water agencies are laying off 7.5 percent of their staff: Henry Brean explained it thus: The Southern Nevada Water Authority and …
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The Colorado River is no one thing
Photographer John Trotter on the Colorado River: When they opened those gates on (Morelos) dam and let water back into the main channel on the river, it kind of engaged those people. It brought them back into the mainstream of all the other people who are living along it in Moab or Grand Junction or …