We’re closing out 2019 with big flows on the Rio Grande through Albuquerque – at least big for this time of year. Flow at the Albuquerque gauge Friday topped 2,000 cubic feet per second, setting a record for Nov. 29 at a gauge that goes back to the mid-1960s. A couple hundred of those cubic …
Continue reading ‘On New Mexico’s Rio Grande, the biggest year since 1995’ »
Water policy folks in other western states may yawn at this, but in New Mexico it’s a big deal. The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer has approved the state’s first instream flow water right. Here’s a summary from Audubon, the group that put the deal together, explaining how it works. The deal would …
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I look forward every year to the annual gathering of the New Mexico Water Dialogue. It’s always a great meeting – the speakers etc. But even more so, it’s a great gathering of our version of “the network” – the diverse collection of folks across cultures and geographies in our state who understand the importance …
Continue reading ‘Building resilience in New Mexico water – Water Dialogue meeting, Jan. 9’ »
If we’re not allowed to divert some of this water, then Arizona continues to get it all, and they become wealthier and wealthier as time goes by. That’s Darr Shannon, head of the government entity hoping to build a diversion to take water out of New Mexico’s bits of the Gila River. From a fascinating …
Continue reading ‘How resentment of Arizona drives New Mexico water policy’ »
The decoupling between water use and economic and population growth continues in Albuquerque, where we’ve cut per capita water use by more than half since the mid-1990s: Albuquerque endured a hot, dry summer this year. Temperatures are still above average, and the monsoon season never made a big splash. But that hasn’t stopped the city …
Continue reading ‘Albuquerque’s water use continues to decline’ »
My UNM Water Resources Program colleague Becky Bixby, on New Mexico public telly explaining our spate of rare (for us in northern NM) algal blooms:
Headed out across campus in a quest for coffee this morning, I had occasion to stop and rest at the little courtyard fountain on the south side of the University of New Mexico’s Zimmerman library. In a neat thesis a couple of years ago, UNM geographer Susanna Diller identified three core values of fountains: a …
Preparing for the fall class I co-teach, I was sitting out by the shady fountain in the old Zimmerman Library courtyard this morning, when I had occasion to spill carne adovada from my breakfast burrito on my copy of Jose Rivera’s book chapter on “The historical role of acequias and agriculture“. (Technically it’s my co-instructor …
Continue reading ‘The repartimiento – a deep history of sharing water’ »