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 …
Continue reading ‘Two very different responses to climate change’ »
It’s all relative, I guess. I just finished my June backyard rain sheet for the National Weather Service, and realize I’ve had 8 times as much precipitation in the first six months of 2012 as I did over the same period last year – 2.21 inches (5.61 cm) compared to 0.27 inch (0.69 cm) last …
Some months ago, I complained in the newspaper about water consumption in Palm Springs: Today … customers of the Desert Water Agency, which serves Palm Springs, consume an average of 540 gallons of water per person per day. Having just visited Palm Springs on a desert vacation, I had that number in mind last week …
The greatest beneficiaries of the Colorado River’s bounty, in terms of irrigation water for agriculture, are at the bottom end of the system – in California’s Imperial Valley and across the border in Yuma County. But the community payoff for all that liquid wealth seems limited. From today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly unemployment report: …
In Cloverdale, Calif., (in Sonoma County north of San Francisco), the local municipal water utility is ratcheting down on outdoor watering: Peak demand on hot days in May and June has come close to maxing out the system’s capacity to deliver to Cloverdale’s population of 8,629. “We’re not in a crisis mode at the moment. …
Atlanta won a big victory today when the Supreme Court turned down appeals from Florida and Alabama, essentially upholding the Georgia city’s right to use water from the Army Corps of Engineers’ Lake Lanier. At least that’s how Atlanta boosters quoted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution are framing it: Shortly after the high court made …
Continue reading ‘In the southeast, back to not fightin’ over water?’ »
When the US government’s Board of Commissioners on the Irrigation of the San Joaquin, Tulare, and Sacramento Valleys of the State of California duly reported to Congress in 1874, its members issued a warning. If a plan for irrigating the rich but arid lands of California’s great Central Valley is not worked out with care the …
Continue reading ‘The Sacramento Delta: “an intricacy of endless legal troubles”’ »
Here’s a cool map for folks thinking about California’s current discussions about building some sort of Peripheral Thingie to carry water around (through? beneath?) the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta: That’s the vote thirty years ago on a ballot initiative asking voters whether the state might build a Peripheral Canal to do the same thing. The red …
When I interviewed Mike Connor, the Bureau of Reclamation’s then-newly minted commissioner, back in 2009, one of his central points was that the era of American dam building was behind us: Michael Connor, the New Mexican who took over as head of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation three months ago, inherited an empire. It is …