Archive of posts filed under the Ribbons of Green category.
“It is as dry as it has ever been.”
Update: Apologies to Norm Gaume and the Water Advocates for screwing up the link to the original quoted piece, which is shared here via Creative Commons copyright [CC BY SA]. Original post: Terrific visualizations from the Water Advocates of the state of New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande: Water Demands and the Effective Water Supply Stress …
Craig Mod on Books
That’s what we’re here for. The books. Nothing we do is more durable or meaningful. I believe this more and more with all my heart. The weirder the world gets, the less meaning there seems to be in public discourse, the more I feel: BOOOOOOOOOOOKS. Printed, hefty suckers, immutable and offline. Moar. I trust books as a medium. …
Ribbons of Green, now available for pre-order
We need a tl;dr here, because I’ve got three or four different versions of this post on my hard drive half written, or in my head, half written. Actual publication as a physical object you can hold in your hands is still five-plus months away, but our new book is now available for pre-order (click …
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Quoting Jack Schmidt
Jack Schmidt on New Mexico water managers’ pushing 1,700 cfs down the Rio Grande in the middle of December to tidy up our annual Rio Grande Compact accounting: Thanks for the reminder of the tragedy of moving water at the wrong time of year when that water provides no ecological benefit. If that water were …
Happy Holidays From a Flowing Rio Grande
The Sunday bike ride included a brief detour to check out the river. The Rio Grande was flowing at 1,700 cfs, the highest sustained flows of the year, as water managers move water downstream to meet their annual Rio Grande Compact accounting goals. The “Happy Holidays” graffiti is, of course, there year ‘round. I love …
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Quoting Dagmar Llewellyn
It’s important to understand that the Rio Grande is not a natural system. It’s an engineered system. It’s managed on a daily basis by a consortium of agencies at all different levels of government plus municipal water users and irrigation districts. So partly, (drying is) a product of decisions. It is also clearly a product …
The driest year on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande since 1964
Total flow to date on the Rio Grande at Otowi is the lowest since 1964. Otowi is the place where the river leaves the upper valleys and enters the canyons that lie at the head of the valley of Albuquerque, what we in New Mexico call the “Middle Rio Grande.” The graph shows total …
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“the nearest thing I have seen to being true”
A bunch of odds and ends cluttering my brain, blog posts that are half written in my mind that are in the way: Quoting Luis Villa on accessing the open data commons We’ve been talking about open data for a long time, but since using data is hard to consume and manipulate, open data has …
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USBR Albuquerque staffing update
From USBR Albuquerque office chief Jennifer Faler’s report to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board yesterday (Monday, July 14, 2025). The USBR Albuquerque office has, on paper, a full staffing contingent of 200 FTEs. That’s on paper. Operationally, the actual levels in the past generally hovered around 175. Current staffing level sits at 117 …