Archive of posts filed under the water category.

On the Rio Grande drought, not exactly optimism, but not pessimism either

Posted by on

Michael Wines in Monday’s New York Times: The perils of drought are on ample display along the Rio Grande, where a rising thirst has tested farmers, fueled environmental battles over vanishing fish and pushed a water-rights dispute between Texas and New Mexico to the Supreme Court. But you can also see glimmers of hope. Albuquerque, …

Continue reading ‘On the Rio Grande drought, not exactly optimism, but not pessimism either’ »

Water in the desert, Wellton-Mohawk edition

Posted by on

The Wellton-Mohawk Valley is one of those places where you can feel the desert pressing in around you, a ribbon of irrigated green no more than 3 miles wide along the Gila River in southwestern Arizona. The last of the winter vegetables are done, and farmers are getting the ground ready for their spring-summer cover …

Continue reading ‘Water in the desert, Wellton-Mohawk edition’ »

San Diego displeased with state water mandate

Posted by on

The San Diego County Water Authority is displeased with the state of California’s decision to set the starting point for its water conservation mandate at 2013, arguing that it rewards communities that ignored the need to conserve until recently, and  penalizes those that have been at the conservation game for a while: For example, water …

Continue reading ‘San Diego displeased with state water mandate’ »

Fallowed ground: 21st century water institutions on Yuma Mesa

Posted by on

This is a field fallowed under a 2013 agreement between Yuma Mesa Irrigation and Drainage District and the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District. The deal is small, but it raises all kinds of fascinating issues of both water management and culture down here in Arizona’s southwestern corner, where water is both economically critical and culturally …

Continue reading ‘Fallowed ground: 21st century water institutions on Yuma Mesa’ »

It’s not all Hoover Dam and giant canals

Posted by on

The Colorado River isn’t very big here, but there’s still enough water in it to drop a pump and irrigate a crop. This is on a weird little geographic island, a chunk of land that is on the west (California) side of the river, but legally in Arizona – left stranded when the Colorado River …

Continue reading ‘It’s not all Hoover Dam and giant canals’ »

Habitat conservation on the Lower Colorado

Posted by on

“Collaboration is a much better way of working than litigation.” – Estevan López, Commissioner, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, during today’s festivities marking the tenth anniversary of the Multi-Species Conservation Program on the Lower Colorado River. Jerry Zimmerman, former executive director of the Colorado River Board of California, told a story this morning about how the …

Continue reading ‘Habitat conservation on the Lower Colorado’ »

In the Reservation Canal, a full supply

Posted by on

I spent much of today in Bard, which is one of the oldest western U.S. irrigation projects of the modern era. It’s modest – about 15,000 irrigated acres, roughly half on the Quechan Indian reservation and half non-Indian land, on the California side, just across the Colorado River from Yuma. Medjool dates are a thing …

Continue reading ‘In the Reservation Canal, a full supply’ »