When the federal government and the seven US states that share the Colorado River signed their 2007 “Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead,” the final Record of Decision (pdf) included several chunks of legalese to the effect that the deal, while binding on the US …
Continue reading ‘How the US-Mexico Colorado shortage/surplus sharing deal works’ »
Water is at the core of a compelling human drama. Or perhaps dramas (plural). Yet the core issues, where the drama lies, are maddeningly difficult to, if I may share a personal journalist neologism, “storyize”. Cynthia Barnett, my favorite water writer, explains in the Los Angeles Times: But we can’t see dried-out aquifers the way …
Kudos to Chris Austin, who was out ahead of everyone else earlier this week in laying out the details of the pending US-Mexico Colorado River water deal. I encourage you to head over to Chris’s blog for more on the deal, which was first presented last Monday to the board of the Metropolitan Water District …
Bruce Finley in the Denver Post tallies up another western city cutting municipal water use, demonstrating that, for city water users, this is a tractable problem: Water-saving efforts already have dropped metro Denver residents’ overall average daily usage to 85 gallons, down from 104 gallons in 2001. Only one city better than Denver in Finley’s …
First, my apologies to Michael Campana, for whom my recent disquisition on hookers and blow on the Lower Colorado seems to have caused some inadvertent difficulties. I expect my Texas neighbors are the forgiving sort and will welcome you back. It would be unfortunate, given their recent difficulties with the whole running-out-of-water thing, if they …
Continue reading ‘Hookers and blow on the Lower Colorado – boring wonky back story’ »
Hey Lower Colorado River Basin. Can we talk? I know, I know. It’s New Water Year’s Eve and it’s like a hundred something degrees and sunny and you wanna go water skiing on Lake Mead, all fat and happy with its 1,115.18 feet of surface elevation, glistening in that warm Nevada sunshine. Or you wanna …
Continue reading ‘Time for a Lower Basin New Year’s resolution?’ »
Chris Austin, the long time brains behind the invaluable Aquafornia (done in partnership with the Water Education Foundation), has a launched a new blog aimed at diving deeper into the weeds. I’ve already learned stuff from it that I didn’t know, such as this: Negotiations with Mexico: Regarding bi-national negotiations with Mexico on Colorado River issues, …
Continue reading ‘US-Mexico water talks stalling – what I learned from a new water blog’ »
While it’s easy to get caught up in the climate wars rhetoric about the Colorado River, and the effect of anthropogenic warming on the river’s flows, it’s important to remember that’s only one of the variables changing in my region’s water future: With population growth pushing up Colorado River Basin water demand as climate change …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: the Colorado River’s supply-demand problem’ »
Is this Michelle Nijhuis piece on the Colorado River terrific because she’s willing to go against the grain and argue for an optimistic future? [D]eputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior David Hayes, ecologist Osvel Hinojosa Huerta of the Mexican conservation group Pronatura Noroeste and University of Arizona paleoclimatologist Jonathan Overpeck all described …
A very smart piece by Mike Lee at the San Diego Union Tribune about water in the west and in the world: “It used to be that our agreements were to share the water,” Scott said. “Now we are trying to figure out how we are going to share the shortage.” That’s meant to be …