Over at the day job, a piece on the National Nuclear Security Administration’s policy of refusing to make public the performance evaluations of the contractors that do the agency’s work: Because it seems unlikely a glowing performance report could be used against a contractor, the agency seems to have decided that protecting the contractors from …
My search for folks working the solution space alights on the growing enthusiasm in New Mexico for wastewater reuse: In other states, especially water-short Arizona and Southern California, cleaning up sewage and reusing it in new and creative ways is becoming common. And in less obvious ways, by returning sewage effluent to New Mexico’s rivers, …
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From the morning paper, the US Bureau of Reclamation has taken a big step toward construction of the Navajo-Gallup Pipeline, which is a big deal around these parts: Jason John, head of the [Navajo] nation’s Water Management Branch, called the request for bids on the pipeline “a huge milestone” in bringing water supplies to the …
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Elephant Butte Dam was one of the first big concrete dam’s in America. It currently doesn’t have much water behind it. My column: An enthusiastic crowd wandered the top of Elephant Butte Dam on Jan. 7, celebrating, with good reason, the structure’s role in New Mexico history. But it must have been hard to ignore …
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It’s not a big drop, but in the face of drought and modest population growth, Albuquerque’s water use dropped in 2011. From the morning paper: The drop was tiny — less than 1 percent. But with Albuquerque weathering one of its driest years in history in 2011, the consumption drop is significant, said Katherine Yuhas, …
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In water policy terms, this is one of the most important stories I’ve done in a while: The steady dripping into Carl Axness’ cistern is the sound of next spring’s water supply. The snow melting from his Rio Rancho roof is the bounty of December’s storms. For the better part of four years, that roof …
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Really. I wrote a newspaper piece about football (the pointyball kind). The backstory is the recent departure of a chap named Mike Locksley, who had a less than successful record coaching the University of New Mexico’s football team. I took to the front page of the morning paper to be what is almost certainly his …
The final Heineman-Fleck backyard precip tally for 2011 is 6.03 inches (15.3 cm). That’s 61.5 percent of the long term average, where by “long term” I mean back to 2000. It is the driest year in my record, just a smidge under 2002’s 6.21 inches (15.8 cm). Only two months, October and the just-completed (I …
There’s a tradition in newspaper journalism of the heartwarming front page story on Christmas morn. Here’s mine: If you could look straight down 538 feet beneath the La Cueva High School neighborhood in Albuquerque’s far Northeast Heights, you would see water returning to the metro area’s depleted aquifer. The water table in the area had …
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Thrown on driveways ’round town last week: The New Mexico Court of Appeals has turned into the state’s chief water policy nag. Three times in a little more than a year, most recently last week, the court issued rulings tinged with exasperation at the need to apply 20th century New Mexico water law to 21st …
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