Nancy Gardner at the Omaha World-Herald has done a nice job of placing the current US drought into context: [W]hile a federal report released earlier this week ranks this as the largest drought in the lower 48 states since 1956, Fuchs cautions against making too many comparisons to the droughts of the 1950s and 1930s. …
Increasingly, I’m seeing the Sacramento Delta argument turned, from the traditional water conveyance and water users v. fish frame to a focus on levees. Here’s the San Jose Mercury News editorial board: The primitive conditions of the levees guarding the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta are shocking. The Delta is mostly below sea level. It provides …
A very smart piece by Mike Lee at the San Diego Union Tribune about water in the west and in the world: “It used to be that our agreements were to share the water,” Scott said. “Now we are trying to figure out how we are going to share the shortage.” That’s meant to be …
If I had more time, I’d write a post about how Chinatown is just a movie, full of stuff that’s made up. But it’s the end of week two of the Tour de France, so posting here’s been light, sorry. Distracted. Can you believe it? We’re in the middle of a drought, and the water …
Smart Mark Lubell on why a better scientific understanding of our groundwater foibles – even “perfect science” – isn’t enough: But there are many policy-makers and citizens who will take that perfect science (even when presented in a very simple manner) and flick it away like a bothersome mosquito because they don’t trust the scientists, …
Jeff Michael did a pithy job Thursday of untangling the snag of old fishing line that is “regulatory assurance”, the Endangered Species Act and the proposal to build giant tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to get water from California’s wet north to its thirsty south with, it is hoped, minimal disruption to the delta …
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Matt Grubs talked to Laura Paskus and I on last night’s In Focus on local public telly. It perhaps goes without saying that we talked about water.
The conventional wisdom about the US Clean Water Act (which I’ve always believed) is that it’s been a great success. Maybe not? On the fortieth anniversary of the Clean Water Act this paper reports the first quantitative assessment of the aggregate trends in water quality in the U.S. using a single standard over the years …
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In the past, I’ve used the Bureau of Reclamation’s Yuma Desalting Plant as a sort of benchmark for measuring who’s the most desperate for water in the Lower Colorado River Basin, and the level of that desperation. Tony Davis had an excellent look at the project this past week in the Arizona Daily Star, and …
Two very different responses to climate change: In London, England, local borough councils are utilizing land use regulations to stop Londoners from removing their front gardens. Nearly 6,000 miles away in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the United States, municipal authorities such as the Southern Nevada Water Authority are doing the exact opposite—offering monetary incentives for landowners to tear …
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