Archive of posts filed under the New Mexico category.

Thoughts on federal drought legislation circa October 2015

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Some thoughts after today’s Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on federal western California New Mexico etc. drought legislation…. On Congressional process We currently have two “California drought bills” – H.R. 2898 developed by California House Republicans and S. 1894. They are very different. As a matter of process, the details of the difference don’t …

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A quiet end to the water year on the Rio Grande

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Water year 2014-15 is ending with low flows again on the Rio Grande through central New Mexico. (We’ve only had one year since 2000 with above-average flows.) Lissa and I walked out to the Rio Grande in Bernalillo County’s far South Valley this afternoon. The water was low. Low is normal for this time of …

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El Niño and New Mexico’s Rio Grande

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Does the looming El Niño mean we can expect a big year on the Rio Grande? Not necessarily. The scatter in the data is huge, but hidden in the data is a bit of a nudge in the direction of wet: That’s native flow at Otowi, the key Rio Grande measurement point north of Albuquerque. There’s …

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In California, clarifying what we mean by “drought”

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Preparing for a lecture for next week for the University of New Mexico Water Resources Program class I’m co-teaching, I’m having the students read this piece by my drought guru Kelly Redmond: Most concepts of drought involve a water balance. This implies that both supply and demand must be considered, as well as the question …

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Decoupling water use from growth: the New Mexico example

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Pulling together some New Mexico water use numbers today for one of my University of New Mexico colleagues, I was reminded of a cool paper from a few years back by Peter H. Gleick and Meena Palaniappan of the Pacific Institute that contained this striking graph: It’s two times series – U.S. gross domestic product and …

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Gila River water governance gizmo built. Sort of.

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New Mexico’s Interstate Stream Commission yesterday formally approved the creation of a “New Mexico Central Arizona Project Entity,” a governance gizmo needed to move forward with a proposal to divert Colorado River tributary water from the Gila River in New Mexico: Interstate Stream Commission members have approved a resolution designating a 14-member unit to design …

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Groundwater in Albuquerque: rising

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A couple of blocks from my Albuquerque home is Del Sol Park, but everyone in the neighborhood calls it “Twin Parks”, because of the short street that divides it in two. On one side of that street, a nondescript concrete pad marks the spot where the U.S. Geological Survey measures the depth to groundwater beneath …

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How I ended the New Mexico drought

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I would like to point out that the first six months of 2015, which roughly coincides with the time since I quite writing about drought for the Albuquerque Journal, have seen the wettest statewide average precipitation since the epic year of 1941: You’re welcome, and you have my deepest apologies for not doing this sooner.