The typical “out with the old” etc. celebrations don’t have much resonance as New Mexico stares down a new water year. From the morning paper: New Mexico faces three problems in the new water year. The first problem is the winter forecast itself. There were signs of an El Niño forming, a climate pattern driven …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Happy New Water Year!’ »
From the Wall Street Journal (full piece $$$-walled): In 2012, the drought-stricken Western United States will ship more than 50 billion gallons of water to China. This water will leave the country embedded in alfalfa—most of it grown in California—and is destined to feed Chinese cows. ht DG
There’s a truism in water politics and policy in the western United States that “water flows uphill to money”. But is it correct? I ran across it most recently in an excellent editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune regarding the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s proposal to build a pipeline to rural Nevada, along the Utah …
Continue reading ‘Does water really flow uphill toward money?’ »
Increasingly, around the United States I see more and more of this sort of story, in which agencies view sewage as an asset: Kenner is seeking state and federal permits to build a 2-mile-long pipeline carrying 17 million gallons of treated sewage a day* into the LaBranche Wetlands. The goal is twofold: Help restore the …
Re my recent discussion of the of the concept of “beneficial use” in western water law, a friend attending a water conservation conference noted he’d run across the concept of “beneficial reduction”. What, in legal terms, might that look like?
Here in the Southwestern United States, we loves us some hot, hot El Niño action. Warm up that equatorial Pacific, and before you know it, ZAM, we’re being pelted with snowflakes and having to shovel our driveways with those wussy regular shovels desert dwellers use. (True story: I actually have a real snow shovel. Lissa …
Continue reading ‘How’s that whole “El Niño” thing workin’ out for ya?’ »
First, my apologies to Michael Campana, for whom my recent disquisition on hookers and blow on the Lower Colorado seems to have caused some inadvertent difficulties. I expect my Texas neighbors are the forgiving sort and will welcome you back. It would be unfortunate, given their recent difficulties with the whole running-out-of-water thing, if they …
Continue reading ‘Hookers and blow on the Lower Colorado – boring wonky back story’ »
An intriguing paper from some folks at UT Austin, looking at the isotopic composition of water in Austin-area streams. Turns out that the natural source water in the area has very different strontium ratios from the imported municipal water brought in from their Colorado River: In the more urbanized watersheds, Sr-isotope mass balance indicates that …
Continue reading ‘That Austin streamwater ain’t comin’ from nature’ »
Hey Lower Colorado River Basin. Can we talk? I know, I know. It’s New Water Year’s Eve and it’s like a hundred something degrees and sunny and you wanna go water skiing on Lake Mead, all fat and happy with its 1,115.18 feet of surface elevation, glistening in that warm Nevada sunshine. Or you wanna …
Continue reading ‘Time for a Lower Basin New Year’s resolution?’ »
Sept. 30 is the end of the “water year”*, and it’s been another dry one at the Heineman-Fleck house. With data back to the 1999-2000 year now, this is the fourth consecutive dry year relative to my personal long term mean here in Albuquerque’s near northeast heights: * Water managers here usually (though not for …