Kyle Mittan had some nice straight talk recently in the Tucson Weekly from the University of Arizona’s Sharon Megdal about Arizona’s projections that it’ll need another million acre feet per year of water by 2060: “A million acre-feet is a lot of water,” she said. “But is that the right number, or is that symbolic …
Inspired by these insanely cool California drought visualizations from Circle of Blue, here’s a drought history in New Mexico over the last 14 years:
In Albuquerque, we frequently tear down our old Route 66 motels, but keep their signs:
This guy paddled past today as I was standing with friends on the bank of the Rio Grande, watching the high flows of this week’s environmental pulse flow through central New Mexico. If you look closely, you can see a bicycle in the front of his canoe. As he rode by, he explained that when …
I had work to do this morning, but this happened and I couldn’t very well not go watch: It’s an environmental pulse flow on the Rio Grande through Albuquerque, creeping down a channel built in 2008 to provide spawning habitat for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow. This is the fourth consecutive very dry year …
From the morning paper: New Mexico’s current drought, with dwindling water supplies and increasing wildfire risk, is a taste of our future under climate change, according to a sweeping new federal report released Tuesday. While climate’s natural ups and downs are playing a major role in our current drought, rising greenhouse gases increase the odds …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: the National Climate Assessment’ »
It’s lacking the drama of the March Minute 319 pulse flow on the Colorado River, but I’m getting my own little pulse flow on the Rio Grande here in Albuquerque beginning later this week: Beginning Wednesday, central New Mexico will get its river back – for a week. The anemic Rio Grande, parched by drought, …
I like my friend JR’s attitude toward gardening in the desert: I water almost nothing here. I do throw yesterday’s left over water from Cooper’s bowl on the autumn sage. It keeps the red blossoms coming and the hummingbirds like that. Some days the birds get the left over water. The New Mexico locust gets …
Teddy Roosevelt, speaking in Santa Fe, NM, May 5, 1903, during his grand western tour: I build no small hope upon the aid that under the wise law of Congress will ultimately be extended to this as to other States and Territories in the way of governmental aid to irrigation. Irrigation is of course to …
Continue reading ‘Irrigation and hope for New Mexico’s future’ »
Also from this morning’s paper, a tougher stance from the New Mexico Environment Department on progress (or lack thereof) in cleaning up a massive groundwater mess beneath Kirtland Air Force Base and adjacent Albuquerque neighborhoods: The letter provided to the Journal is an expression of increasing Environment Department frustration with the cleanup progress. A month …