On the scale of Colorado River water diversions yet unbuilt, the possibility of taking water out of the Gila River in southwestern New Mexico is small stuff – 14,000 acre feet per year, or maybe less if the water’s simply not there. But the current debate in New Mexico illustrates a common refrain as western …
Continue reading ‘USBR: Gila diversion costs exceed benefits’ »
I’m increasingly at a loss about how to do useful journalism because of the gap between the technical world I try to understand (risks associated with water contamination, for example, or the problem of drought) and the public reaction to my efforts to provide a nuanced but accurate explanation of the thing at hand. Mark …
Most of the land in these reservations is and always has been arid. If the water necessary to sustain life is to be had, it must come from the Colorado River or its tributaries. It can be said without overstatement that when the Indians were put on these reservations they were not considered to be …
Continue reading ‘Annals of Indian water: “hot, scorching sands”’ »
From last Sunday’s newspaper, a solutions-oriented piece on an effort to scale up forest and watershed restoration in the mountains around me: Trees being cut last week on Forest Service land near the Sandia Crest Road can be used as firewood, but there is not enough money to be made from cutting the small timber …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: forest health = watershed health’ »
From this morning’s Albuquerque Journal: “You’ve got to deal with people, farmers, companies, everyone,” Sandra Postel told me last week when I asked about the work she’s doing trying to find environmentally sustainable solutions to western North America’s water problems. In other words, you’ve got to cooperate.
While all eyes have been on Lake Mead’s bathtub ring, Lake Powell is forecast to rise by nearly 1.4 million acre feet by the end of September. But Mead’s 2 million acre foot drop will more than offset the increase, leaving us with the lowest end-of-year total storage in the two reservoirs combined since 1967, …
Continue reading ‘Total storage behind Hoover, Glen Canyon Dams’ »
It’s always interesting to see who, among western municipal water agencies, is considering paying top dollar for the next acre foot of water. Today’s episode comes from Tucson, where Tony Davis explains discussions of turning wastewater into drinking water. The usual “yuck factor” discussion of course is engaged, but the really interesting part to me …
Michael Campana offers some cautions about over-interpreting what the Castle et al. paper on the loss of Colorado River Basin groundwater is telling us. It’s a question of stocks versus flows. The GRACE measurements that have gotten such extensive attention can tells us the latter, but not the former: Why is such a number – …
Continue reading ‘Michael Campana on stocks, flows, and Colorado River Basin groundwater research’ »
Fascinating piece by Brett Walton about the eastward spread of U.S. irrigation: The canals, reservoirs, pumps, and pivoting sprinklers that transformed the American West in the 20th century from desert and grassland into the nation’s primary fruit and vegetable producing region are spreading eastward. From the Deep South, the Mississippi River Delta, and across the …
Continue reading ‘In the United States, irrigation’s eastward spread’ »