It almost felt like a setup when Steve Harris asked me to talk at a conference about how “water is for cooperating over.” I make a meager but steady living these days writing about water conflict. And yet…. [B]efore I got to Ghost Ranch on Friday afternoon, I took the turnoff to Abiquiu Reservoir. In …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: in the midst of drought, signs of water cooperation’ »
Drought exposes the fissures in water policy. In the abstract, you can talk about where the problems look like they might lie, and the measures that look like they’re in place to ensure adaptability and sustainability. Drought tests. This week’s test is happening down on the Pecos, a relatively small river that flows out of …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: The “futile call” – a water rights priority dilemma’ »
Bill Hasencamp at the Metropolitan Water District (I think it was Bill) asked a question today on the Colorada Basin River Forecast Center monthly briefing call that led to an email exchange that led to this, from the work blog: the forecast for spring inflow into Lake Powell, on the Colorado River, is the lowest …
The US Bureau of Reclamation was known as the US Reclamation Service (USRS) from its formation via the Reclamation Act of 1902 until it was renamed in 1923. This “USRS” was cast in concrete on Mesilla Dam, an irrigation diversion structure on the Rio Grande outside Las Cruces, NM, in 1915. The dam is part …
It is a strange reality of our modern world that, in the face of a truly remarkable drought here in the Middle Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, I was able to pour imported Colorado River water on purely ornamental plants in my garden yesterday morning. I’m thrifty with the water – a modest drip …
In 1889, John Wesley Powell tagged along as a group of US Senators toured the western United States in an effort to understand “the irrigation problem”. What Powell reported looks kinda familiar: “The winds are drifting sands here and there,” John Wesley Powell said of his 1889 visit to the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Powell warned us’ »
From the morning paper, a look at the effect of drought on farmers in southern New Mexico. It’s a more complex story than simply lack of water, and the impact depends a great deal on where you are: The Franzoys’ problem is not so much the dropping aquifer as the quality of the groundwater. It …
Continue reading ‘stuff I wrote elsewhere: drought hits New Mexico’s famed Hatch Valley’ »
Working with some colleagues, (including, no shit, the Emmy-award winning co-founder of Inkstain), an experiment in alternative story-telling forms to accompany a newspaper piece on the impact of drought on farmers in the southern Rio Grande valley of New Mexico:
From Tuesday’s newspaper, State water bills down to trickle: New Mexico’s water problem is simple. We’re using more than we’ve got. When it’s framed this way, the solutions are simple. Get more. Use less. Or, at the very least, stop using more every year. But watching the 2013 New Mexico Legislature wrestle with these questions suggests …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: water problems are hard’ »