Hannah Holm of the Water Center at Colorado Mesa University argues that agricultural water conservation doesn’t really save water: When water is diverted from a stream and put onto the land, part of that water is taken up by plants, part of it evaporates, and part of it makes its way back to the stream. With …
Given my profession, I’m incentivized to freak out about drought. If I thought it wasn’t a big deal, I’d have to find something else to write about. But in darker moments, I wonder if I’m overdoing the freakout. Chris Austin’s writeup of Ellen Hanak’s comments at this week’s California water bond hearing raise the question …
In late 2010 and early 2011, when I was plotting out the narrative arc for my Colorado River book, I began collecting what I imagined was the detailed storytelling material to describe the decline of the river’s great reservoirs. I’d been out to Lake Mead to document the day it dropped to record level. And …
Continue reading ‘River beat: the emptying of Lake Powell’ »
From Tuesday’s newspaper, State water bills down to trickle: New Mexico’s water problem is simple. We’re using more than we’ve got. When it’s framed this way, the solutions are simple. Get more. Use less. Or, at the very least, stop using more every year. But watching the 2013 New Mexico Legislature wrestle with these questions suggests …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: water problems are hard’ »
On a road trip to southern New Mexico to report on drought: “That’s a forlorn-looking river, isn’t it,” Phil King told me as we walked out on Mesilla Dam this afternoon, looking down at the bed of sand where the Rio Grande is supposed to be.
From the California state water contractors, a new framing. It’s not that stupid little fish, or those pesky environmentalists: Limits on pumping operations are an ongoing issue due to the Delta’s outdated water delivery system. “Earlier this year, storms came through that could have provided a substantial boost to our water reservoirs, but we simply …
Continue reading ‘A new framing of the Sacramento Delta problem’ »
Andrew Freedman had an interesting piece last month about tree ring research that’s different than the stuff I usually write about: The past several decades have been the wettest in nearly five centuries for the watershed serving the nation’s largest city, New York, according to a new study. But that wet period is deceiving because …
Continue reading ‘A New York story: not all the tree rings’ tales are about drought’ »
Reed Benson, water law professor at the University of New Mexico, has an op-ed in this morning’s Albuquerque Journal arguing for the re-authorization of the US Bureau of Reclamation’s Drought Relief Act powers, which expired last year (adwalled): Major droughts, including more intense ones than this, have always been a fact of life in the West. …
At the xeriscape show last week, I picked up a nifty new rain gauge, courtesy of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, with this helpful advice: Skip one watering when you receive at least a quarter of an inch of rain. The last time that happened at my house? September.
Apart from the specific contributions which mining made to agriculture in California, farming has always resembled mining in this state. The soil is really mined, not farmed. Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception