Can the decline of an “invasive” species be taken as a sign of an ecosystem’s declining health? That’s the question raised by an interesting Alastair Bland article in the East Bay Express on the latest numbers for striped bass in the Sacramento-San Joaquin-San Francisco Bay Delta system: Scientists say the existing population may be as …
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, economist Gary Libecap’s take on “The Myth of Owens Valley“: The allegations are that Owens Valley water was stolen from farmers by a rapacious Los Angeles and, once it was shipped out of the valley through the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the agricultural economy …
Electa Draper in the Denver Post over the weekend on what happens when streams reclaim their flood plains in a human-altered world: Before Colorado was settled, its narrow canyons were river channel from wall to wall. Humans added roads and buildings in these tight spots and confined the channel. In one week in September, the …
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The politics-economics interface is what fascinates me about this new idea kicking around to replenish the rapidly draining Ogallala Aquifer by moving water across Kansas from the Missouri River. As Brett Walton explained last month in Circle of Blue, it’s a modest study at this point, with costs split between the state and federal government. …
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A storm blew through Santa Fe last night. Lissa and I drove up into the Sangres to see the snow:
Circa 1958, a unique argument in favor of the development of the next wave of dams in the Colorado River Basin. At the time, the Eisenhower administration had failed to include any “new starts” for U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects in its Fiscal Year 1959 budget. Sen. James E. Murray, D-Montana, was alarmed: Your attention …
Full caption: Irrigation ditch along the road. Imperial Valley, California; Lange, Dorothea, photographer; 1937 Feb. Lange’s justly famous for her pictures of the people of the Imperial Valley when she travelled there in the late 1930s as a documentarian for the Farm Service Administration. She also took pictures of water. If you want to get lost for …
With Lake Mead water levels dropping, Pat Mulroy is in a race against Mother Nature. That’s how the risks facing by Las Vegas, Nev., were framed this week in a piece in The Henderson Press. But as one of the members of my water geek brain trust, Phil King, likes to point out, reservoir levels …
Here’s a great quote from Carl Hayden. It was June, 1922, still in the early days of the jockeying for development of the Colorado River’s water. Hayden was at the time a relatively junior member of the House, having not yet ascended to the political heights from which decades later, as Arizona’s senior senator, he …
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It was dark when I got out of my rental car yesterday evening in Rancho Bernardo, north of San Diego. I couldn’t really see the place, but I could smell the tell-tale scent of eucalyptus. I slept with the window open. There was a eucalyptus outside my window. I slept well. When I grew up …