Since early spring, I’ve taken my early morning bike ride through downtown Albuquerque to the old Route 66 crossing of the Rio Grande. Every time, I’ve stopped to check out this little sandbar island, anchored by a tenacious community of willows. I started watching closely after I saw a pair of geese, frantic as the …
Continue reading ‘Resilience and my little Rio Grande sandbar island’ »
The 1946 Bureau of Reclamation report projecting future development of the Colorado River – “A Natural Menace Becomes a National Resources” was its subtitle – included a picture of Hoover Dam with the caption: “World’s highest dam only partly harnesses the wild Colorado River.” The report laid out a staggeringly ambitious plan for the rest …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s shrinking Gila River diversion proposal shrinks some more’ »
TAOS JUNCTION BRIDGE – I took back roads upon back roads this weekend to get home from Boulder, where a bunch of us had gathered for three very socially and intellectually intense days talking Colorado River stuff. I ended up on one of those “what happens if I turn here?” digressions, off US 285 onto …
On New Mexico Highway 36, beneath the sign announcing your entry into the community of Fence Lake, someone has appended a small hand-lettered sign announcing, “NO FISHING”. This is appropriate, as there is no lake. Fence Lake is remarkably self-aware. There’s an obelisk-ish monument in front of the former Fence Lake school (now a “community …
Continue reading ‘“Fence Lake, you will some day fade away.”’ »
If you’re following flows on the Rio Grande through New Mexico this spring, no doubt you noticed the big drop this morning in releases from El Vado Reservoir on the Rio Chama. (Of course you noticed, right?) Welcome to what we in the UNM Water Resources Program have come to call “the institutional hydrograph”. It …
Continue reading ‘The Institutional Hydrograh: Article VII of the Rio Grande Compact’ »
“My research integrates elements of biology, hydrology, and geomorphology,” said Hobbs, who is currently working on her Masters’ in Water Resources in UNM’s Water Resources Program. “In New Mexico, the water is more spoken for than it is present. The use of water must be allocated amongst multiple users while also trying to maintain a …
Continue reading ‘Mo Hobbs on the interdisciplinary nature of water’ »
I had a fascinating conversation this morning with the guy in the hat, who was out with his family fishing where the Middle Rio Grand Conservancy District’s Central Wasteway drops water out of the Albuquerque irrigation system, back into the Rio Grande. I’ve been bicycling to this bridge three or four times a week recently, …
My co-author Eric Kuhn was in town over the weekend to finish up the copy edits for our upcoming book Science be Dammed, and happily we were not so busy that we didn’t have a chance to get in a couple of bike rides. (In our collaboration these last few years, “Are you going to …
There is an Air Force Base on Albuquerque south side. It has contaminated our aquifer. The relationship between the community and the Air Force regarding cleanup has been rocky. More rocks:
My “job”, as director of the University of New Mexico Water Resources Program, requires me to pay close attention to New Mexico’s water. So of course when I saw this morning that the Rio Grande’s flow through Albuquerque had topped 2,500 cubic feet per second, I had to conduct “field work”. Anything above 2,300 cfs …
Continue reading ‘Morning bike ride – *totally* work related’ »