And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way. John Steinbeck, in East of Eden This famous quote came up today in Circle of Blue‘s conference call/seminar on California drought. …
From the morning paper, Norm Gaume’s critique of a proposal to divert water from the Gila: New Mexico is overestimating the amount of water available from a proposed Gila River diversion and underestimating the cost and technical difficulty of the project, according to the former head of the state agency involved. The project, as currently …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: a critique of the Gila diversion’ »
Economist Bryan Caplan, doing an AMA, on drought policy: Q: With the drought in Southern California is it possible the state is over populated? Meaning we have to halt immigration into the south west? A: No. Just raise the price of water!
Danger. Journalist doing math. There be dragons: Otowi is the Rio Grande’s gateway to central New Mexico. Located between Santa Fe and Los Alamos, it’s the point where the river has picked up pretty much all the snowmelt it’s going to get, absent some minor contributions from the Jemez Mountains. It’s also a key point …
California is entering its fourth drought in as many decades. Yet even now, some communities lack water meters to track how much water people are using and to charge them accordingly. Many of those households don’t even receive monthly water bills. They pay for water through yearly assessments attached to their property taxes, which may …
Continue reading ‘It’s not like California hasn’t had the time to get in front of this problem’ »
Doesn’t actually come from a glacier. Filtered tap water. Also, no penguins apparently involved.
From this morning’s newspaper, we appear to be headed toward Endangered Species Act litigation this year on the Rio Grande: Human water diversions have left the Rio Grande ecosystem with too little water to maintain the minnow and other species that depend on the river’s flow, including the valley’s iconic cottonwoods, said Jen Pelz, Wild …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: headed toward ESA litigation on the Rio Grande’ »
Best line about water management I ever wrote: Wet years have a way of covering up a multitude of water management sins. Drought exposes them for all to see. It also helps to expose those sins, apparently, if you have satellites. Here’s Jay Famiglietti, talking about what the GRACE satellites show about groundwater depletion in …
Continue reading ‘When there’s a drought, you pump groundwater, until you can’t’ »
I do not understand this. Not being rhetorical or coy. I really do not understand this. I’ve observed before that Yuma and Imperial counties, the two farm regions that have benefitted from enormous allocations of Colorado River water and the support of the federal government that goes with it, have some of the highest unemployment …
Continue reading ‘Puzzling over water and agricultural economics’ »
There’s so much rich material in Henry Brean’s exit interview of Pat Mulroy, the outgoing head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, that I barely know where to begin, but let’s start with water pricing. Mulroy makes clear (as she always has) that she viewed it as her responsibility to deliver the water the community …
Continue reading ‘Mulroy on growth, supply and water pricing’ »