OK, this was just fun: Absent a really giant floating rubber ducky, the Rail Runner bridge across Albuquerque’s main flood control channel appears to be safe. “The thing about water that people don’t understand is that it is so powerful,” said Adrienne Martinez as she stood over water rushing beneath a scale model of the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: the giant rubber duck risk’ »
The anthropologist William Abruzzi wrote a fascinating essay some years ago explaining the success of early Mormon agriculture in the Little Colorado River Basin, one of the more bad-assed desert environments in which one might want to do one’s 19th century, pre-federal-irrigation-subsidy farming. Holbrook, which spans the Little Colorado, averages a bit more than 8 …
During World War II, Philadelphia a major industrial center for war production, according to historian Herbert Ershkowitz. The work was accompanied by a public relations blitz to encourage conservation in support of the war effort.
From the morning paper: The last time New Mexico was (by at least one measure) this dry, Billy the Kid was shooting up the state and pueblo crops in the Rio Grande Valley were wilting. The “one measure” in this case is consecutive dry years on the Rio Grande: From 1873 to 1883, the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: New Mexico drought, Billy the Kid edition’ »
From the Daily Herald in Provo, Utah: “This is a very, very important issue and we are trying to offer some leadership in this regard and brought in people to give direction,” Freeze said of the summit. “We want what is best for our communities and families. We all realize that, like it or not, …
tl;dr While Northern California flounders, Southern California’s drought planning kicks in as Met taps into its Lake Mead water savings bank Brett Walton, writing about President Obama’s visit to California’s drought-stricken Central Valley, captured that state’s water policy dilemma: “It can’t just be a matter of there’s going to be less and less water so …
From Brett Walton, a visit to California’s Central Valley to witness Stein’s Law in action: David Zoldoske, who has worked at Fresno State for 31 years, sees this as the future of agriculture in the Central Valley. Fewer acres will be irrigated, less groundwater will be pumped. Walton’s entire piece is worth reading. Wikipedia has …
Continue reading ‘“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”’ »
California Congressman Devin Nunes, in this morning’s New York Times: “Global warming is nonsense,” Mr. Nunes said. He criticized the federal government for shutting off portions of California’s system of water irrigation and storage, and diverting water into a program for freshwater salmon. “There was plenty of water. This has nothing to do with drought. …
Given the tension from Texas’s legal complaints against New Mexico regarding the impact of New Mexico groundwater pumping on Texas Rio Grande supply (see Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado), this El Paso Water Utilities pump house feels to some like a middle finger raised in New Mexico’s direction. It’s just inside the Texas border, …
As we watch Californians floundering over drought, or sometimes not floundering, it’s worth revisiting Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons. In it, Ostrom tells the story of communities in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles, coming together to manage their groundwater at a time when a race to the bottom was underway that, absent …
Continue reading ‘Losing the groundwater pumping race to the bottom: your choice’ »