Deadpool Diaries: The Case for a Shitty Deal

I’ve had long conversations this week with smart friends grudgingly supporting of the Lower Basin deal to reduce Colorado River water use over the next few years. Their case for it is simple. Yes, it’s an awful deal in so many ways, but it does have the potential to generate some short term water use …

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Deadpool Diaries: “Nice river basin ya’ got there….”

This feels like a shakedown. Nice river basin ya’ got there. Would be shame if somethin’ happened to it. For decades, Lower Colorado River water users have been taking more water than the river can provide, threatening their own communities’ futures. Unable to come up with a plan to live within their water means, they’re …

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The Stotts Lateral: new candidate for “Albuquerque’s Most Urban Ditch”

My search for Albuquerque’s “Most Urban Irrigation Ditch” took us yesterday to the Stotts Lateral in the North Valley. The Stotts is about a half mile long, carrying water under the railroad tracks from the Alameda Lateral to the Alameda Drain. The east half is underground. The west half, tiny and concrete-lined, is an urban …

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On Cochiti dam and the notion of “flooding”

Rio Grande flow dropped this week through Albuquerque, at a time when we should expect it to be rising with the accelerating melt of an unusually large snowmelt. What’s up with that? The answer (see below, I’m can’t figure out how to tl;dr this) is a case study in the stuff we’re trying to explain …

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Deadpool Diaries: Colorado River Report Card, May 2023 – please tell us your plan

The Bureau of Reclamation is currently blasting water out the bottom of Glen Canyon Dam as Lake Powell rises with this year’s big snowmelt. (The big spike is an experimental flow pulse.) Lake Mead, as a result, is rising for the first time in a while, with the wrecked speedboats disappearing – and with it, …

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Dust on snow seems to be increasing the chances of Rio Grande drying this year through Albuquerque

We have a chance this year to watch a fascinating intersection of climate-change driven changes in the Rio Grande through Albuquerque as filtered through both physical infrastructure and what we call the “institutional hydrograph”. The tl;dr Dust on snow is likely to accelerate Rio Grande headwaters snowmelt, meaning all that stored water comes off earlier. …

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Stansbury puts pressure on the Air Force to deal with the Kirtland Air Force Base spill

Rep. Melanie Stansbury, my congresswoman, is throwing her considerable political and water policy clout behind efforts to poke the U.S. Air Force into action on its malingering fuel spill on Albuquerque’s south side. Dani Prokop had a nice overview of the issues this morning in Source NM: Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) called Tuesday for the …

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Ribbons of green and the sand hills beyond

There’s a weird bench at the edge of a lovely little ten acre patch of desert sand hill scrub a ten minute walk from my office at the UNM School of Law. The path circles the edge of the university’s north golf course, which is green and lovely in its pumped-groundwater way. The path (It’s …

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