I was reminded at a talk last night that farmers in the Elephant Butte Irrigation District in southern New Mexico got less than 10 percent of a full irrigation allotment last year. I say that by way of a preface to noting Juliet McKenna’s observation that there’s a 50-50 chance of a formal shortage declaration in …
Filing some pictures this evening, I came across this, taken in the bed of the Rio Grande beneath the Hatch bridge in southern New Mexico on April 29, 2013: This is the sort of thing Jack Schmidt of the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center was talking about at a conference in Boulder last August when he …
Talking about water, and talking about water as a commodity, is not the same as talking about a river. Jack Schmidt, Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, speaking at the Clyde Martz Summer Water Conference, August 2013, University of Colorado
From this morning’s newspaper: The community’s total water use for the year, 32 billion gallons, was the lowest for the metro area since 1983, despite the fact that the population in the utility’s service area has grown 70 percent in the two decades since, according to Katherine Yuhas.
I suppose it’s a sign of the times on the Colorado River that a January forecast of 95 percent of average flow into Lake Powell counts as good news. Since green on the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center map runs from 90 to 110 percent, we get green. It’s only a little bit below average! …
Continue reading ‘For now, some breathing room on the Colorado River’ »
Three years ago John Leeper, then head of the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources, told me about the importance of the deal that assigns long-neglected water rights along with the money to bring the water to arid eastern side of the reservation: “Real water to real people in real time.” Last week Roberto Rosales …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: real water, real people’ »
“For certain specific purposes, and, primarily among them, for pumping water in moderate quantities, the windmill is not only a thoroughly reliable, but at the same time the most economical prime mover, and as far as judgment can now be passed, will hold this place for many years to come.” – Alfred R. Wolff, The …
In Southern California, the link between weather and water has been inextricably broken. Here’s Bettina Boxall on why L.A.’s driest year, ever, doesn’t matter all that much: Although this year’s No. 1 ranking makes for an interesting conversation piece, it has little practical effect. As anyone driving around Los Angeles can see, lawns are still …
Reed Benson: [I]n places where there is no river-dependent species listed as threatened or endangered, environmental factors often carry little weight in water management. Without a listed species, water allocation and management often ignore the health of the river. And even where listed species do exist, focusing on the needs of a single species (as …
Continue reading ‘The shortcomings of the Endangered Species Act in western water’ »