Albuquerque readers: chance to help UNM water research
Albuquerque friends, here’s a chance to help a group of University of New Mexico colleagues on research important to our water future:
Archive of posts filed under the New Mexico category.
Repartimientos de agua: New Mexico’s tradition of water sharing
Repartimientos de agua is how community acequia systems operate in times of water scarcity. Custom originally arose out of conflict and the ongoing elastic process of negotiation and reconciliationitself, of meeting year after year to divide the water according to agreements forged in crisis long ago. Acequieros believe that water scarcity should be shared equitably …
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A new home for some stuff I write now and then
My friend Scot Key offered me double the rate they pay here at Inkstain (this is a joke, we are bloggers, we do it for “exposure”) so I’ve got a new post up over at his Better Burque. We mostly ride bikes and complain about how much this or that sucks, especially poorly designed and executed …
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the monsoon arrived, and the citizens of Tucson and Albuquerque did rejoice
The dewpoint yesterday (Tues. June 28, 2016) passed a sort of vaguely science-based but somewhat arbitrary threshold for the start of the monsoon in Albuquerque – three consecutive days above 47F (8.3C): They’re partying in Tucson, too: It's official! The monsoon is here https://t.co/Aq14D9L3Aj via @tucsonstar — mike_crimmins (@mike_crimmins) June 28, 2016
Gila River diversion being significantly downscaled
We now have an answer to the question of where the money will come from for a billion dollar diversion to take water from the Gila River, a Colorado River tributary in southwestern New Mexico. Nowhere. Laura Paskus has the scoop on this week’s decision by the project’s governing body to abandon the Cadillac versions …
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a monsoon looms
This is one of my favorite weather times of year in Albuquerque, the moment of anticipation when our monsoon looms. As monsoons go, it’s a pretty modest affair, and I’d frequently get crap from Albuquerque Journal readers objecting to the term – it’s not a real monsoon, someone who’s been to south Asia would frequently …
Metro Los Angeles – one of the places Californians *do* regulate their groundwater
Steve Scauzillo wrote last week about the Water Replenishment District of Southern California’s decision to invest $110 million in a new wastewater treatment plant, that they might use 21,000 acre feet now discharged to the ocean to recharge regional aquifers instead. Formed in the early 1960s, the WRD is the best example of one of …
Toxic materials regulatory reform
I got an education this year in the nuances of global toxic materials regulatory regimes when I served on UNM graduate student Rachel Moore’s masters committee with Caroline Scruggs, a professor here at the university who’s worked for years in this area. (The paper on their work is here.) Caroline showed up in the Albuquerque …
My escape from the newsroom
Laura Paskus did a lovely job chronicling my post-newspaper-journalism (post-journalism?) life and thinking about water and the news, no longer the old nickname – “the harbinger of doom”: “I began to realize there was this other story about people not running out of water,” he says. Locally, for example, he points to a drop in Albuquerque’s …
Pushing back against the water conflict narrative
A big thanks to J.R. Logan for this piece,which talks about the New Mexico acequia water governance model as an alternative to the “water’s for fighting over” narrative: Ledoux says sharing water has always been customary. Taking more than your fair share would have simply been wrong. This notion of sharing is not intrinsic to water …
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