Does this simply represent hardening of demand – the result of low-hanging conservation fruit being mostly all plucked? Or does this suggest arid Arizona is not headed toward the big water-driven economic collapse some people fear?
Circa 1958, a unique argument in favor of the development of the next wave of dams in the Colorado River Basin. At the time, the Eisenhower administration had failed to include any “new starts” for U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects in its Fiscal Year 1959 budget. Sen. James E. Murray, D-Montana, was alarmed: Your attention …
Full caption: Irrigation ditch along the road. Imperial Valley, California; Lange, Dorothea, photographer; 1937 Feb. Lange’s justly famous for her pictures of the people of the Imperial Valley when she travelled there in the late 1930s as a documentarian for the Farm Service Administration. She also took pictures of water. If you want to get lost for …
With Lake Mead water levels dropping, Pat Mulroy is in a race against Mother Nature. That’s how the risks facing by Las Vegas, Nev., were framed this week in a piece in The Henderson Press. But as one of the members of my water geek brain trust, Phil King, likes to point out, reservoir levels …
Here’s a great quote from Carl Hayden. It was June, 1922, still in the early days of the jockeying for development of the Colorado River’s water. Hayden was at the time a relatively junior member of the House, having not yet ascended to the political heights from which decades later, as Arizona’s senior senator, he …
Continue reading ‘Carl Hayden: “water as cheaply as it can be served”’ »
Working on a book chapter about the genesis and importance of the Arizona v. California litigation over the Colorado River, I ran across this priceless little bit of business from 1944. It is Harry Bashore, Comissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, testifying in Phoenix in July of that year, before the a subcommittee of …
Continue reading ‘Drought and Despair: “these enemies of mankind”’ »
It rained kind of a lot in the intermountain west this month, which raises a fascinating question about the tools we use for Colorado River management, and the tendency of water managers and management institutions to base significant actions on median flow forecasts rather than managing with a flexibility that considers the probabilistic nature of …
Continue reading ‘Reduced releases from Lake Powell: no going back’ »
The new header picture on the blog is from the USGS photo archive, attributed to E.C. LaRue, 1921, in Glen Canyon
Henry Brean on Pat Mulroy, arguably the most significant water manager in the Colorado River Basin: She got her bachelor’s degree from UNLV, then stayed on to earn her master’s in German literature. Laugh if you will, she said, but “it’s a great study in human nature, and it’s a great study in political theory.”
Here’s Henry Brean: Long-time Southern Nevada Water Authority chief Pat Mulroy is preparing to retire but won’t make a formal announcement until “she’s ready,” Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak said Monday. And Conor Shine: Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy is planning to retire after 22 years on the job. Reached Monday evening, …