There’s an interesting framing thing going on here in New Mexico around the Fiscal Year 2008 budget. The House of Representatives is pushing some relatively deep cuts in the nuclear weapons research, development, manufacturing etc. budget. For those not familiar with New Mexico, we’re home to two large nuclear weapons labs. Those cuts would effect …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Framing Edition’ »
Staci Matlock has a good story in this morning’s Santa Fe New Mexican outlining the regulatory dilemma facing New Mexico related to Sandoval County’s hunt for brackish water for desalination: This new, deep source of water poses a regulatory challenge to the state engineer, who is charged with overseeing New Mexico’s increasingly precious water resources. …
Continue reading ‘Inland Desalination: The Regulatory Side’ »
Sawmill Park Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Wandering on the bike today, I stumbled (rolled?) into this lovely little new park in the Sawmill neighborhood, just north of Albuquerque’s Old Town.
On the federal budget process and its implications for the nuclear weapons program: The new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1— in just 10 days. But Congress hasn’t completed any spending bills, and partisan bickering has broken out in Washington over what to do about the problem. In the long term, the battle is over …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Budget Chaos Edition’ »
Staci Matlock at the Santa Fe New Mexican wrote a good primer over the weekend about the difference between water rights and actual water here in New Mexico: Real water: That’s wet water, the stuff one needs for drinking, washing clothes, growing food, building houses and cooling power plants. Paper water: The piece of paper …
Just totaling up my rainfall to send in to the National Weather Service: 1.4 inches (35.5 mm) in August. The official Albuquerque total, out at the airport, was 1.05 inches (26.7 mm). Around town, from the COCORAHS network, totals ranged from a low of 0.54 inch (13.7 mm) out on the southwest mesa to a …
Based on all the reporting I’ve been doing for the Albuquerque Journal, it seems to me that you could easily substitute “New Mexico” for “Colorado” in this story: The issue is critical in Western states such as Colorado, where even in wet years almost every river already is “over-appropriated,” with insufficient water to satisfy demand. …
paper of the day: More melting, this time in British Columbia. “The recent rate of glacier loss in the Coast Mountains (17.0 km?3a?1) is approximately double that observed for the previous two decades.” reading: Super Crunchers – yet more on why the algorithms are smarter than the humans and will eventually take over the world …
bosque-pond Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. The picture’s a tease. It was taken last October, so think of it as a hint of things to come. But the hints were there aplenty this morning on my bike ride along the riverside trail – little sprinklings of single yellow leaves on the cottonwoods. We’re still in summer, …
My colleague Sean Olson illustrates in this morning’s paper his grasp of the connection between water and growth: A request for water and sewer service for Westland DevCo’s southwest Albuquerque development was approved by the water board this week, even though it met heavy resistance from two city councilors. Michael Cadigan and Isaac Benton on …