Archive of posts filed under the water category.

It’s not like California hasn’t had the time to get in front of this problem

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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 …

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Stuff I wrote elsewhere: headed toward ESA litigation on the Rio Grande

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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 …

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When there’s a drought, you pump groundwater, until you can’t

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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 …

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Puzzling over water and agricultural economics

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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 …

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Mulroy on growth, supply and water pricing

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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 …

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Water in the desert, Bosque del Apache plumbing edition

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Lunch today sitting in the car at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, with a pond of snow geese, pintails and assorted other water fowl wintering here in one of the few broad wet spots in the Middle Rio Grande Valley of central New Mexico. A birder friend explained once that the car makes …

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Breathe, California. Keep it together. You can do this.

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California, listen to me. (Grabs home state firmly by the shoulders, stares into California’s face intensely.) You can do this. It’s going to be OK. I know, I know. “Zero” sounds bad. But you go into a drought with the water supply and water system you have, not the one you might want or wish …

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Pat Mulroy, the Hayduke of the 21st century

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Nevada journalist George Knapp has a wacky suggestion for Pat Mulroy on her way out the door at the Southern Nevada Water Authority: [I]t is still possible for Mulroy to make a grand, parting gesture by starting the ball rolling on a plan to drain Lake Powell…. This’d make an excellent final chapter for my …

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