Aaron Citron, with the Environmental Defense Fund, argues that identifying farmers as our water problem – They use 80 percent of our water! – is wrong: [F]armers and ranchers are the original environmentalists, water conservationists and land stewards. They have been, and continue to be, among the first to develop innovative water efficiency solutions, and …
The little town of Huron, California (Fresno County, population 7,000) is on the brink of running out of water. Its plight to illustrates a broader point about “running out of water”. First, its story courtesy of the Central Valley News, which reports that Huron could run out of water by July: Huron, a rural farming …
Kindra McQuillan at High Country News interviewed Dan Beard, former head of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, on his provocative new book Deadbeat Dams: Why We Should Abolish the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Tear Down Glen Canyon Dam: (Dams) distract us. We’re mesmerized by the construction of new facilities, as if it’s going to solve …
Jeff Michael published some new data today suggesting California agricultural has been more resilient and less damaged by the current drought than I expected. “[T]here is virtually no difference in farm employment between 2014 and 2013 in the 3 counties that are thought to be most devastated by the drought,” Michael wrote. But perhaps I …
Continue reading ‘California farming in drought: a “robust corpse?”’ »
Reading Alex Breitler’s story yesterday about Stockton, for the first time in history, restricting the days of the week residents can water their lawns, I was reminded of this bit of business from Las Vegas: In 1950, the municipality began restricting lawn watering. During the next two years the city employed the alternate day method, …
Continue reading ‘The history of odd/even day watering restrictions’ »
Today’s long lead forecast from the Climate Prediction Center is pretty sweet: That’s May-July, and here’s a reminder about what the color blobs mean, because that swatch of green across New Mexico, where I live, can be a bit misleading. The CPC divides climatological history into three bins – 1/3 dry, 1/3 the middle, and …
Continue reading ‘For the parched southwestern U.S., a good forecast’ »
Ensconced in my office in Albuquerque, I’ve been popping in and out of the webcast of today’s California State Water Resources Control Board workshop on the future of the Salton Sea, and I’ve noticed a very interesting subtext to the discussion that I think is important. It’s about the importance of Salton Sea environmental management …
Faith Kearns has a smart look at an under-covered piece of the problem of drought – the psychology of waiting: [W]hile waiting for uncertain news, people often focus on preparing—emotionally and logistically—for any possible outcome. People tend to shift between optimism and pessimism, and both states can help increase readiness. Optimism engenders people to take …
Emily Green has written a great primer for Southern Californians on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the distant geography from which a big chunk of their water emerges: [W]hat makes the Delta the Delta is water. After winter rain and snow, roughly half of California’s fresh water arrives in this quirkily engineered, mis-named place. Twenty five …
Continue reading ‘Sacramento Delta 101, and sharing water’ »
David Zetland: [W]e see a total lack of vision or action to address the REAL drivers of scarcity — retail prices too low to notice, permissive overuse of groundwater, failing water-as-charity policies, and the blinders of a historic pretension that water rights are properly allocated (nope) in the correct volumes (NOPE). Taken together, the excess …
Continue reading ‘An economist’s view of California’s water problems’ »