Archive of posts filed under the water category.

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: climate change on the Colorado River

Posted by on

The science accumulates: The more greenhouse gases push up temperatures over the next few decades, the more New Mexico’s water supplies are at risk, according to new research by a team of Columbia University scientists. Using the latest high-resolution global climate simulations, the scientists show evaporation caused by warming temperatures is likely to leave less …

Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: climate change on the Colorado River’ »

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: more on plumbing and nature

Posted by on

From this morning’s newspaper, an attempt to frame (in my own mind) the coming “gnarly struggle over the federal Endangered Species Act’s requirement that we try to keep the Rio Grande silvery minnow alive“: The reason for the river’s November-December surge was a small stockpile of water the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had stashed during …

Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: more on plumbing and nature’ »

Imperial farmers are no dummies

Posted by on

Antoine Abou-Diwan had a story in the Imperial Valley Press (apologies if the link goes away, I think IVP sunsets their stories after a time) capturing the nervous twitches in California’s Imperial Valley over the future allocation of the Colorado River’s water. Through Friday (source in pdf), IID had diverted 2.9 million acre feet of water, …

Continue reading ‘Imperial farmers are no dummies’ »

water and public health

Posted by on

American cities became much healthier in the early twentieth century because they were spending as much on water as the federal government spent on everything except the military and the postal service. Edward Glaeser, writing in Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

On water supply importation

Posted by on

Given the findings of the recent federal-state Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study, it’s useful to look back at what other efforts at sussing out the region’s water problems and solutions have found. It’s especially interesting given the (to me) striking assertion in the Basin Study that building a pipeline from the Missouri, or …

Continue reading ‘On water supply importation’ »

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: trouble on the Rio Grande

Posted by on

From this morning’s newspaper, a look at the coming trouble among farming, fish, cities and water in the Rio Grande: [W]ith farms and cities diverting water from the river to meet their needs, leaving enough for the fish and the ecosystem on which it depends while at the same time meeting human needs has become …

Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: trouble on the Rio Grande’ »

Farmers vs. fish, pot-growing edition

Posted by on

From the Joe Mozingo at the LA Times: The marijuana boom that came with the sudden rise of medical cannabis in California has wreaked havoc on the fragile habitats of the North Coast and other parts of California. With little or no oversight, farmers have illegally mowed down timber, graded mountaintops flat for sprawling greenhouses, …

Continue reading ‘Farmers vs. fish, pot-growing edition’ »

Water: contamination v. consumption

Posted by on

If one allows mining of a nonrenewable source, it is disingenuous to argue that the source should never be polluted if the economic activity causing the pollution is necessary to sustain employment. Suppose that two individuals proposed to extract water from a nonrenewable aquifer. The first agreed he would farm and by doing so dry up the aquifer. …

Continue reading ‘Water: contamination v. consumption’ »