Ricardo Castillo celebrates the Colorado River “pulse flow” and reminds of us the transboundary tensions that preceded it. He sounds pissed: U.S. Americans proudly boast about the beauty of the Grand Canyon and the might of the Colorado River as “great American treasures.” Over the past 50 years, however, both the U.S. federal government and …
Continue reading ‘“water hoarding” on the U.S. side of the border’ »
More than once last week while I was down in the Colorado River delta, I heard people involved with the historic “pulse flow” talk about one of the problems that comes next: managing expectations. This headline and file art, from Fox Latino, illustrates the problem. “Colorado River Begins Flooding Dried Up Delta,” the headline reads, …
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Back in Albuquerque after dark last night, cleaning out the car this morning after a week down in the Colorado River borderlands, I realized these water bottles may pose a legal problem. I filled them in Yuma, which means this is Lower Basin water. Have I just violated the Colorado River Compact? My bad, sorry.
Packing up this morning to head home after a week watching the environmental pulse flow on the Colorado River into Mexico. Ran across this in one of my notebooks, from Bob Snow, an attorney in the U.S. Interior Solicitor’s Office who has been working on this since the ’90s and helped negotiated the international agreement …
I consider it a great accomplishment that I spent an entire week in the desert sun of the Colorado River delta without getting sunburned.
You’ve seen lots of pretty pictures of the Colorado River flowing anew into its delta, right? But one of the most interesting things going on is the movement of water out of sight, beneath the ground (see “hydrology at the end of a river” for some background). I had a chance this morning to visit …
I took a break today from the excitement of following a newly rejuvenated Colorado River south, across the border into Mexico, where it rarely flows, and followed “the river” west instead. Forty-nine river miles upstream from the “Southern International Boundary” – essentially the bridge at San Luis Rio Colorado – a structure known as Imperial …
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO – Morelos Dam, the last dam on the Colorado, normally diverts the river’s entire flow west, into the Canal Reforma, for farms in the Mexicali valley. In Spanish, it’s called “Presa Morelos,” where “presa” means “dam.” But Francisco Rosas, a Mexicali farmer, told me that it has a second meaning – …
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO – Apologies. This is kinda convoluted, but it’s what happened. One of my journalistic techniques is to try to put myself in a place where something interesting is likely to happen, something real, and then wait. So at lunchtime today, I parked in the shade of the San Luis Bridge on …
Continue reading ‘A pickup, stuck in the Colorado River sand’ »
Hydrologically speaking, the end of a river is a complicated thing. A couple of miles down the levee road on the U.S. side of the border with Baja in Yuma County, Ariz., I came across this farmer yesterday pumping groundwater to irrigate some sort of palm orchard (with some lovely bonus citrus). This is a …