Lissa and I were walking in the Rio Grande bosque, the riparian cottonwood forest, last night when the sun dropped below the clouds just before sunset and lit the trees across the pond with the most exquisite light. All we had was a cell phone camera, so I went back this evening at the same …
Continue reading ‘Water in the desert: not exactly nature, but close’ »
This week’s bit of western water history comes from the archives of the Library of Congress. Elephant Butte Dam (originally Engle Dam) is on the Rio Grande upstream from El Paso. Completed in 1915, it is currently the subject of a fascinating New Mexico water rights adjudication battle, nicely detailed by Sig Silber.
It’s been called the largest tributary in New Mexico’s middle Rio Grande – the outfall from Albuquerque’s sewage treatment plant. A friend loaned me his mountain bike for the weekend (I’m in the market for a new bike that I can ride off the pavement), so I took it for a test ride down in …
Continue reading ‘The Largest Tributary in the Middle Rio Grande?’ »
Saturday’s post about Phoenix and the need for proper institutional structures to sort out the West’s water problems was really a bit of shadowboxing with a piece I was working on for today’s paper about New Mexico (sub. ad req.) It’s about an ongoing argument here about a proposed water rights agreement between our Interstate …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: On Water and Institutional Structures’ »
We had a nice line of thundershowers move across Albuquerque this afternoon. After dinner, Lissa and I headed to the north end of town to view the results. The metro area’s North Diversion Channel drains roughly 100 square miles of city, and flood control engineers tell me it’s a relatively unusual terrain for a major …
Continue reading ‘Water in the Desert: Moving Flash Floods’ »
From this morning’s newspaper (sub/ad req), a story about the new paper in today’s Science by Jonathan Overpeck and Brad Udall about climate change in the West. Udall and Overpeck have become fixtures on the western water meeting circuit over the last several years delivering this message, and the paper contains no real surprises. But …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Dry Times Ahead in the West’ »
The book project means I often pay more attention to the Colorado River, at least journalistically, than the river through my own back yard. But via the work blog, you can see that it’s dry over on this side of the continental divide as well: Over the last 14 years there have only been three …
From the pages of the Albuquerque Journal (sub/ad req), a look at the growing concerns regarding a deal between the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission and Intel over water rights needed to cover Intel’s pumping: A proposed agreement to use excess Rio Grande water to meet computer chip-maker Intel’s long-term water rights needs faces growing …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Intel-NM Water Deal’ »
Seen on the bike today: A new beaver dam taking shape in the riverside drain, just south of the Interstate 40 bridge. A pair of bicycle cops pulling over a cyclist on the riverside trail. (If you ride the trail on the weekends, you know Singing Guy. Wears headphones, sings very loudly and very badly. …
From this morning’s newspaper, a visit with John Horning to the railroad bridge at San Marcial (sub/ad req.), one of the choke points that prevents high flows on the Middle Rio Grande through central New Mexico: The railroad bridge, and similar spots where too much water could damage property, prevent the high spring flows that …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: the bridge at San Marcial’ »