Talking to Jake Bittle for his Grist piece on the trials and tribulations of El Vado Dam, he asked me a question I loved: “What does this mean in the larger scheme of things?” My answer: We’ve optimized entire human and natural communities around the way this aging infrastructure allows us to manipulate the flow …
Continue reading ‘In New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande, the wheels are coming off’ »
Central New Mexico’s Rio Grande water users are perched on the edge of a dangerous precipice because of our failure to deliver enough water to Elephant Butte Reservoir, according to a June 28, 2024, letter from the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. We’re currently 121,500 feet …
The graph uses day-long averages. The actual peak yesterday was over 3,000 cfs at the Central Avenue Bridge. Here’s what it looked like around noon:
This remarkable image by Roberto Rosales, my former Albuquerque Journal colleague now taking pictures for City Desk ABQ, captures a sharp reality of Albuquerque. We built our city in a flood plain, and in particular downtown beginning in the 1880s in a low area that was part Rio Grande flood path, and part swamp. That …
Continue reading ‘“sad havoc” – what happens when you build a city in a flood plain’ »
Two key takeaways from Monday’s (May 13, 2024) Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board meeting: El Vado Dam, crucial for managing irrigation, municipal, and environmental water through New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande valley, will be out of service indefinitely – for many, many years. The vague structure of alternative storage options, using other existing dams, …
We’ll get an update on the status of El Vado Dam and related issues at this afternoon’s (Mon. 5/13/24) meeting of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s board of directors. This is an enormously consequential issue for Rio Grande flows through central New Mexico. The Meeting Today’s board meeting starts at 3 p.m. at the …
The Rio Grande is up through Albuquerque right now, swollen with spring snowmelt. But not for long. We may already have hit the runoff peak at a bit above 3,000 cubic feet per second in late April, and a friend who’s been cheerfully nagging me to float it with them talked me into locking down …
Continue reading ‘Floating Albuquerque’s Rio Grande: notes on “naturalness”’ »
A recent rapid warmup has brought high flows to the Rio Grande through New Mexico. But with a modest snowpack sitting in the mountains to the north, that means we should expect the early rise to be followed by an early drop. Members of the Inkstain Rio Grande Rapid Response Team (IRGRRT) were busy over …
Continue reading ‘Rapid snowmelt on New Mexico’s Rio Grande’ »
The Bureau of Reclamation’s announcement at Monday’s meeting of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District that it is halting work on El Vado Dam repairs raises hugely consequential questions about water management in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley. The short explanation for the halt is that the current approach to repairing the 1930s-era dam …
It is telling that I got excited when I noticed inflow into New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley approaching “normal”, which I now define as the median of 21st century flow. Our climate-altered world, y’all. A note on the evolution of the graph: I’ve added the “max” and “min” lines back. I dropped them because …