tl;dr Despite good rain in the cities of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley this year (especially at my house!), it’s the snowpack that matters for state water supply. And the snowpack is not good. Longer: My backyard rain barrels are full, and the latest storm has brought Albuquerque’s water year precipitation (since Oct. 1) to …
Continue reading ‘In New Mexico, precip where it matters not’ »
Isabel Sanchez, my editor for many years at the Albuquerque Journal, gave me this hourglass as a going away present. The joke has been that I really need a new watch, and that I was just nine months away from my 25th anniversary at the Journal, which is traditionally marked by the gift of a …
As near as I can tell, the American Civil Liberties Union has no particular stake in water policy. But the venerable champion of free speech is wading into the rancorous New Mexico debate over the possible diversion of water from the Gila River. Lauren Villagran writes (behind surveywall): The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday …
The University of Arizona’s Mike Crimmins: But the real answer might be for Arizonans and other people of the southwest to adapt to living under drought conditions. “We expect it to be a lot wetter than it is and it should be,” Crimmins said. “Just look around, the landscape tells the story. This is not …
At Costco over the weekend in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I snapped this iPhone picture of California almonds, lots of them. I was planning the joke even before I took it about imported California water, on sale here in the desert. Which is true. Takes a lot of California water to make these almonds. But upon …
Brett Walton reports this morning on the initial cost estimates for a pipeline/canal thingie to move Missouri River water to western Kansas: By all measures, it would be a mammoth undertaking. A 360-mile canal to move Missouri River water uphill across Kansas would cost $US 18 billion to build and $US 1 billion per year …
Continue reading ‘The Hard Path: moving water costs a lot’ »
A few years back, I put on my “water beat reporter” hat and went to Santa Fe for the spring legislative session to track some bills that I found interesting. The newspaper has a team of skilled legislative specialists who I’ve always been able to lean on, but it was fun to bring my water …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico water policy and the problems of a part-time legislature’ »
The negotiation of the 1922 Colorado River Compact governing the allocation of water from the West’s great river, and the ratification process that followed, was a politically delicate process. Precisely how delicate is made clear in a fascinating exchange of letters 10 years after between Colorado attorney Delph Carpenter (the compact’s primary architect) and Norcutt …
Continue reading ‘Transparency and the Colorado River Compact’ »
If we don’t get things right, water conservation can actually make us less resilient in the face of variability and climate change, the University of Arizona’s Christopher Scott and colleagues argue in a recent paper. It’s the case for being wary of “demand hardening”, and it raises interesting questions about current Colorado River Basin conservation …
Continue reading ‘To what extent does water conservation reduce resilience?’ »
Gary Woodard argues that we need to stop worrying so much about running out of water and do a better job instead of planning for the fact that we’re using less: Stories about the alarming state of water in the West seem to be everywhere. Prolonged drought, scant snowpacks, receding reservoirs, rampant groundwater overdraft, and …