It’s a little thing, this new breed of drought-tolerant alfalfa bred on New Mexico State University research plots in the southern part of my arid state. But it provides another clue (behind a Google surveywall) about what the path forward in western water management might look like: Adoption of a new crop takes time, so don’t …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Drought-tolerant alfalfa’ »
People in arid lands have always been very ingenious when it comes to conserving water. The late New Mexico writer and irrigator Juan Estevan Arrellano, from his new book Enduring Acequias: Wisdom of the Land, Knowledge of the Water, which came out in August, shortly before his recent sad and untimely death.
The latest USGS “Estimated Use of Water in the US” is out. It says we’re using less water. From 2005-10, a 13 percent drop. “Peak water” happened back in 1980: There are lots of caveats. This analysis uses “withdrawals” rather than “consumptive use”. So if a power plant sucks up river water for cooling, …
Water is photogenic, even at a sewage treatment plant. This is from a tour this afternoon of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority’s Southside Wastewater Reclamation Plant with a couple of University of New Mexico faculty colleagues and a bunch of students, including the graduate students in the Water Resources Program, where I’m an …
I had a lovely afternoon yesterday walking alongside the Bear Canyon Arroyo in Albuquerque’s northeast heights, talking with fellow water nerds Katherine Yuhas and Amy Ewing, and watching water flow in New Mexico’s first operational aquifer storage and recovery project (behind a Google surveywall): Nearly 3,000 gallons a minute of water began spurting from a …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: ASR in New Mexico’ »
About a decade ago, New Mexico state Rep. Mimi Stewart introduced legislation to collect a “water resource fee” on all water use in the state – $2 per acre foot for ag, $20 per acre foot for municipal and most other water users. (details in a 2003 talk by Steward here – pdf) The idea …
A lovely fall day in the Rio Grande Valley, on Albuquerque’s west side. The green field in the lower left of this picture is alfalfa. The scraggly brown stuff in the middle and right foreground is a part of the same field left fallow this year. The cottonwoods, God love ’em, suck up water no …
Continue reading ‘Here’s what ag water conservation might look like’ »
I was wrong when I wrote in April that Lake Mead would continue to set “lowest ever for this point in the year” records for all of 2014. As I write this, with a few hours left in October, Mead’s surface elevation is 1,082.79 feet above seal level. That is more than five whole inches above …
Continue reading ‘A Halloween treat: Lake Mead’s not quite as empty as we expected’ »
What economists call “weak sustainability” is the notion that, as you deplete some stock of natural capital, you reinvest in some stock of replacement capital. An example might be taking some of the surplus from extracting oil and gas and investing in solar or wind energy so you’ve still got some supply of energy when …
The case for dumping prior appropriation, the doctrine under which the first water users have the highest priority rights – Travis Stills: The 21st century water-use debate must move past “I got it first,” which children on the playground know is patently unreasonable and unfair.