Deepening and widening of stream channels in the Southwest is a phenomenon that has taken place within the memory of men now living. It began at different dates from 1860 on and has progressed at different rates on several streams, as summarized in a recent paper.²? The flood plains of numerous minor streams are yet …
By Jack Schmidt,1 Anne Castle,2 John Fleck,3 Eric Kuhn,4 Kathryn Sorensen,5 Katherine Tara,6 While Colorado River Basin attention is focused on negotiating post-2026 operating rules, a near term crisis is unfolding before our eyes. If no immediate action is taken to reduce water use, our already-thin buffer of storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead …
Continue reading ‘Analysis of Colorado River Basin Storage Suggests Need For Immediate Action’ »
NEAR THE CONFLUENCE OF THE RIO PUERCO AND THE RIO GRANDE – The broad delta where the Rio Puerco meets the Rio Grande in central New Mexico has never been a great place to live, though people try. To the east, across the river, the Ancestral Puebloan Piro built the village Spanish colonizers named “Sevilleta” …
Alert Inkstain reader Rolf asked in the comments of last weekend’s post for a version of the above graph – number of days of low flow at the Central Avenue Bridge – with a threshold above zero. I usually set the threshold at 25, because our experience in the last two drying episodes – 2022 …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s Dry Middle Rio Grande: More Data Visualizations’ »
I spent some time this morning crunching numbers, trying to make numerical sense of how bad this year is on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande. We keep saying it’s only the second time the Rio Grande has dried through Albuquerque since the 1980s, but that felt insufficient. Some data visualization experiments: By this measure – …
Continue reading ‘Driest on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande since when? 1972? 1964?’ »
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling …
If you have ever been to modern San Marcial, New Mexico – or what is left of it – the notion of an 86-pound catfish requires some explanation. The spot where D.C. George hooked his record catfish is today ragged scrubland. But for a brief, shining, extremely odd period of time in the 1940s and …
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University of Arizona economist Bonnie Colby on why the enduring opposition to water transfers out of agriculture goes beyond price: This is not surprising given third party economic effects when irrigated agriculture diminishes in a region. However, the enduring nature of the opposition is striking, even when seemingly generous compensation is included for third party …
With the latest Bureau of Reclamation model runs highlighting the serious risks posed by the declining reservoir levels that Utah State’s Jack Schmidt has been warning about, there are signs that the closed-room discussions among the seven basin states, after brief glimmers of hope last month, are once again not going well. The Reservoirs The …
Continue reading ‘Return of the Deadpool Diaries: The Colorado River news keeps getting worse’ »
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 …