A guest post by Friend of Inkstain Michael Cohen…. By Michael Cohen, Senior Fellow, Pacific Institute December 15, 2025 Key Takeaways Missing Deadlines Way back at the end of the last century, at the annual Colorado River conference in Vegas, Marc Reisner repeated the Margaret Thatcher quote that consensus is the absence of leadership. On …
I don’t envy Secretary Burgum the position that he’s in, but we do need federal leadership. Secretary Burgum already reached out to convene a meeting. He invited the governors and the chief negotiators to DC earlier [last] week. That meeting didn’t happen because three of the four Upper Basin governors weren’t willing to go. [Nevada …
Continue reading ‘Quoting Katie Hobbs on Colorado River Negotiations’ »
Ten years after I handed in the manuscript for my book Water is For Fighting Over, about the governance past, present, and future of the Colorado River, my Utton Center colleague Rin Tara and I took a look back at the book on our Water Matters podcast. Writing it changed my life, reading it changed …
Continue reading ‘Water is For Fighting Over, ten years on’ »
Bonnie Colby and Zoey Reed-Spitzer: Access to water, a concern around the globe, is constrained in many areas of the Colorado River Basin (CRB) by water scarcity, pollution and lack of delivery and treatment infrastructure. These constraints disproportionately affect the basin’s Native American, Hispanic and Black populations, groups which often have lower access to resources …
Jack Schmidt on New Mexico water managers’ pushing 1,700 cfs down the Rio Grande in the middle of December to tidy up our annual Rio Grande Compact accounting: Thanks for the reminder of the tragedy of moving water at the wrong time of year when that water provides no ecological benefit. If that water were …
The Sunday bike ride included a brief detour to check out the river. The Rio Grande was flowing at 1,700 cfs, the highest sustained flows of the year, as water managers move water downstream to meet their annual Rio Grande Compact accounting goals. The “Happy Holidays” graffiti is, of course, there year ‘round. I love …
Continue reading ‘Happy Holidays From a Flowing Rio Grande’ »
By Jack Schmidt | December 3, 2025 Autumn Rains Delay Basin-wide Reservoir Depletion In BriefUnusually wet conditions in the Basin in October and November 2025, combined with reduced releases from some reservoirs, led to a basin-wide increase in storage for the two-month period. The combined contents of Lake Powell and Lake Mead increased during the …
Continue reading ‘Autumn Rains Delay Colorado River Basin-wide Reservoir Depletion’ »
It’s important to understand that the Rio Grande is not a natural system. It’s an engineered system. It’s managed on a daily basis by a consortium of agencies at all different levels of government plus municipal water users and irrigation districts. So partly, (drying is) a product of decisions. It is also clearly a product …
Wednesday family lunch included tacos at El Paisa on Bridge just west of the river, and then a drive to the Los Padillas Cemetery in the far south valley. I love cemeteries because they speak to some deep values, and I’ve taken to using them as a teaching tool for our UNM Water Resources Program …
Continue reading ‘The Value of Water in Alternative Uses, Cemetery Edition’ »