Three years ago John Leeper, then head of the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources, told me about the importance of the deal that assigns long-neglected water rights along with the money to bring the water to arid eastern side of the reservation: “Real water to real people in real time.” Last week Roberto Rosales …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: real water, real people’ »
When you sell less water, you make less money selling water. It’s the modern water agency dilemma: Albuquerque’s municipal water agency may need another rate increase to dig out of a growing financial hole left by the community’s water conservation success, agency officials acknowledged in a report this week to their board.
I wrote a story in this morning’s newspaper about New Mexico’s efforts to revive its moribund state water planning process: Ten years after New Mexico officials last took a stab at developing a state water plan, they are reviving their effort to calculate the gaps between New Mexico’s finite water supplies and the needs of …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: New Mexico water planning’ »
I did not realize the Ancestral Puebloans were known for their leather furniture. New Mexico is a wondrous place.
Reed Benson, a University of New Mexico law professor whose patient explanations and deep writing have been extraordinarily helpful to my understand of things like the doctrine of prior appropriation and the Endangered Species Act, has joined the blogoworld: It has come to my attention … that a lot of people do not read law …
Continue reading ‘Here’s a new western water blog worth adding to your RSS feed’ »
This open land on Albuquerque’s west side, a 20 mile drive from downtown but probably half of that as the crow flies, is getting a newly improved four-lane road and drainage. It’s currently home to a cluster of shooting ranges, the place where we turn our post-sewage plant poop into compost, and a small airport. …
I had a couple of pieces in the newspaper last week about New Mexico’s long term water usage trends. I wrote the stories because the data, a time series I assembled by reviewing state water use reports, surprised me: Water for household use peaked in 1995 and has been declining ever since, according to state …
Yesterday my sister and I busted Mom out of the nursing home for lunch and a drive down by the river to see the tail end of the fall colors. Down by Tingley Beach, an Albuquerque municipal park adjacent to the Rio Grande, the cottonwoods were still putting on a show, but they’re clearly tiring, …
Continue reading ‘Water in the desert: the winter palette’ »
A storm blew through Santa Fe last night. Lissa and I drove up into the Sangres to see the snow: