My newspaper colleagues Marla Brose and Olivier Uyttebrouck did a lovely package over the weekend about a group of Franciscans here in Albuquerque celebrating Easter. Especially check out Marla’s slide show (story’s also linked from that page.)
IMG_0252 Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. That’s the Rio Grande you see there – the entire Rio Grande, as it leaves Cochiti Dam 40 river miles north of Albuquerque. It was flowing at about 1,000 cubic feet per second today when Lissa and I drove by during a Sunday wander. Cochiti, completed in the early 1970s, …
A bunch of stuff over at the place where I get paid on Energy Secretary Steve Chu’s visit to New Mexico this week. The bottom line: nuclear weapons remain important, lots of other missions for the labs, happy talk, no specifics. the bottom line (start here if you want to just skip to the meat, …
V.B. Price, in the Independent, has a must-read rumination on water constraints in middle Rio Grande planning: Is the notion of “reinventing cities” in the American West less about new rail and other transportation infrastructure than it is about finally being honest about water and doing something about it? But what could be done? Must …
On our nation’s appalling* inability to make decisions about nuclear weapon policy: In 1989, the Department of Energy told Congress that the old building was contaminated, with widespread corrosion, and asked for money to build a replacement. A year later, Congress killed funding, saying the federal government needed to come up with an overarching plan …
On the political tension over water conservation: Why should I save water when all it does is enable more sprawl?
I have a standing policy here at the Inkstain News Center against quoting anonymous sources, but this is too sweet to pass up: My alligators tell me that Joe Monahan’s college nickname was “Squid”. “Alligators” is NM politics blogger Monahan’s word for his anonymous sources, who tell him all kinds of important stuff, some of …
Money for nuclear weapons cleanup in the stimulus bill (adwalled): The federal government will pump $384 million into New Mexico’s nuclear institutions to clean up and dispose of old Cold War waste in one of the largest economic stimulus investments in the state. Los Alamos National Laboratory will get $212 million between now and 2011 …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Nuke Cleanup Edition’ »
Everybody’s calling the big omnibus public lands bill that passed the House yesterday a wilderness bill, but we water wonks know better, right: Legislation to settle a long-standing dispute over the Navajo Nation’s rights to water from the San Juan River won final congressional approval Wednesday. The legislation acknowledges the Navajo Nation’s right to 600,000 …
From today’s newspaper, a look at decision-making in the face of uncertainty on the Colorado River: Trying to follow the science of climate change and the Colorado River, it would be easy to throw up your hands. Very smart scientists (Hoerling among them) have come up with very different answers about how climate change might …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere, Colorado River Edition’ »