Juliet McKenna has done a fantastic back-of-the-envelope calculation about potential effect of dust created by Las Vegas, Nevada’s proposed groundwater pumping system. Vegas, you’ll recall, wants to build a pipeline across the state, using groundwater from distant rural areas to fuel growth in that state’s largest metropolis. McKenna notes that various analyses of the project …
An interesting note from the Montgomery and Associates water blog on the financial problems facing the Central Arizona Project, which delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. If the Board leaves rates alone this year, some customers may be temporarily satisfied. However, financial problems will persist and grow, adding to uncertainty for the future. …
I’m going to make up a story. I’d like to think it might be true. There’s an impromptu path I like to walk along the Rio Grande in Albuquerque that follows a narrow high spot of riverbank for something between a quarter and a half a mile. As you head north, the river’s on your …
Keith Kloor had a nice riff the other day on the question of how we should decide what “nature” is supposed to look like, now that we’re kinda in charge: It’s not my job to say what nature should mean in a world shaped primarily by humans–I’m still working it out, myself–but I know others …
I get it. Albuquerque is not a wet place. With an average of 9.71 inches (24.7 cm) per year of precipitation at the PRISM pixel for my house, I live in a desert, a hair beneath the arbitrary 10 inch (25 cm) definitional cutoff. But this is f’ing ridiculous. With January done, I’ve received 0.44 …
2013 has the potential here in New Mexico to be a great laboratory for exploring the question of specifically where and when water supply shortages actually play out during a drought year. I took a crack in this morning’s paper at setting up the problem, highlighting what I see as the four key New Meixco …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: where the water will run out’ »
I often don’t know what to make of California, despite it being the state of my birth and a source of endless study and fascination. Jerry Brown was the governor when I was a teenager, and I respect him as one of the nation’s great politicians. I mean something specific and respectful by the term …
Via Realtor.com, we find this lovely 7,000-square foot home in Boulder City, Nev., with a swimming pool plus a great view of the bathtub ring on a dwindling Lake Mead, where the pool water came from: Yours for just $1.9m.
My current water policy obsession is the question of what actually happens – agency by agency, water user by user – when the water starts to run out. Much of the “OMG, we’re running out of water!” discussion plays out in the form of graphs of the future that extend projected supply and demand curves, …
I confronted a litany of drought when I was making the rounds on my newspaper beat this morning. No doubt this has happened before and I’ve just not noticed it, but the current forecasts are dry at all the basic time scales I watch closely. I lined ’em all up so you could share New …
Continue reading ‘Running the table: dry at all relevant time scales’ »