I can think of few better uses for water that growing avocados. Can you? Escondido is planning to build a $6 million pipeline, set to debut in 2015, that would redirect water bound for an ocean outflow and convert it into recycled water for avocado farms in the eastern portion of the city. Yum.
The interplay between human water use and natural systems has always been a ratchet, and when the environmental conversation began in earnest in this country, the ratchet was already cranked down tight. By the time, for example, that we began having a conversation about preservation of environmental values on the Lower Colorado River, Hoover Dam …
Continue reading ‘“The environment has always gotten the short end of the stick.”’ »
In freedom-lovin’, drought hatin’ Texas, it takes state legislation to allow homeowners to rip out their lawns: While many Texans are cutting back on their water use by switching to drought-friendly landscaping, some may find an obstacle in their way: Homeowners Associations (HOAs). A new bill in the state legislature would change that.
My post last week on the Bellagio fountain and the fact that it got its water from wells originally drilled to water an old golf course drew questions. Today, we have answers. Jeffrey Prest asks: “What was the name of the old golf course?” Doug Bennett at the Southern Nevada Water Authority shared this old postcard of …
Continue reading ‘More on where the Bellagio fountain gets its water’ »
From the morning paper, the latest in the struggle to figure out how much water the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow needs: According to an analysis by the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, the river has only once since the 1990s, in 2005, had enough water to meet the Fish and Wildlife Service’s “conservation objective” …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere – Anthropocene diaries: how much water for the minnow?’ »
The agreement between the Southern Nevada Water Authority (Las Vegas) and the Arizona Water Banking Authority, under which Arizona banked water for Nevada, has always seemed to me like a harbinger of the future in the Colorado River Basin – mutually beneficial sharing across state borders. Via Juliet McKenna and Michele Robertson, it now appears …
Continue reading ‘landmark Arizona-Nevada water deal coming to an end’ »
oops, update, forgot link Journal photographer Robert Rosales and I recently visited Maxwell, NM, which I describe (I think safely, though how does one know for sure?) as having “arguably the most serious drought-driven municipal water supply problem in the state of New Mexico.” From the story: Asked about the burden she bears in trying …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Real water, real people, Maxwell NM edition’ »
I’ve been getting this wrong. The water in the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas does not come from recycled sewage: The Bellagio fountains are mostly using well water that exists beneath the Bellagio landscape. That well water was used previously to maintain a golf course that previously existed there. The beauty of that is the …
Continue reading ‘Where the Bellagio Fountain’s water comes from’ »
A forest burns down. Humans rescue fish, keep ’em alive in an Albuquerque warehouse. Maybe 80 years before the drainage that feeds their forest creek recovers. Maybe 200. This is life in the anthropocene: Angela James’ fish tanks don’t look much like Whiskey Creek. But for 68 imperiled Gila trout, the tanks in a northeast …
Continue reading ‘Anthropocene diaries: a fish story I wrote elsewhere’ »