From this morning’s newspaper, my story about the New Mexico state engineer’s decision to deny a proposal to pump rural groundwater from rural western New Mexico to the Rio Grande Valley: By failing to be specific about where the water was going, the project’s backers failed to meet the requirements of state law, Verhines ruled. …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico rural-urban groundwater project denied’ »
Another tidbit from the National Research Council’s new report on the problems of the California Bay-Delta: By assigning to water a scarcity value of zero, many current policies signal consumers that water is available without limit, even while the limits imposed by scarcity are intensifying. As a result, more water is used than would be …
Continue reading ‘National Research Council on the scarcity value of water’ »
I’ve written before about John Van Dyke’s memorable description of the line between a desert river’s ribbon of green and the arid landscape that surrounds it… the line where the one leaves off and the other begins is drawn as with the sharp edge of a knife. This holds true when the knife’s edge is …
Continue reading ‘the sharp edge of a knife between wet and dry’ »
In 1935, the California Supreme Court ruled in the case of Tulare v. Lindsay-Strathmore that drowning gophers was, self-evidently, not a “beneficial use” of the state’s precious water resources. Also squirrels: Another gave it as his reason for irrigating in winter that “every time we irrigate we kill gophers … the best season of the year …
Continue reading ‘Great moments in western water law: drowning gophers’ »
What we call here the “water year” runs from October to the end of September. It’s a useful tool, capturing the fall-winter-early spring water collection season, in which snow builds up in the mountains for later use by humans and ecosystem, followed by the water use season. So the end of March is a nice …
Continue reading ‘Halfway through the water year: fear and the attention economy’ »
I’ve been addled by influenza for the better part of a week, tortured by feverish dreams of men in dark robes (were there robed women too?) in a great white-fronted building holding solemn rituals to try determine whether I might be healed. But it was like Plato’s cave – you couldn’t see the robed tribal …
Continue reading ‘A fevered first reading of the National Research Council’s Bay-Delta Report’ »
In my continuing effort to milk the not-Twain quote for all it’s worth, there is this – in the mountains north of the well fields of the proposed Cadiz California groundwater project is Whiskey Spring. And of course, one of the big areas of fightin’ in Cadiz is the question of whether the project’s groundwater …
Continue reading ‘Could Whiskey Spring be fer fightin’ over?’ »
Pulled up from the comments on yesterday’s Cadiz post, the Aquafornia Maven shares a marvelous metaphor regarding the costs of coastal desal: I was on a tour through the Lower Colorado River last week, and we stopped at the Gene Pumping Plant and were being briefed on SoCal water issues. Some one asked Bill Hasencamp …
It’s easy to blame climate change when you’re in DC begging for money to subsidize your water problems. OK, maybe not easy, on account of DC not believing in climate change and stuff. Also not having any money even if it did. But the dynamic in this Steve Tetreault story as Pat Mulroy visits our …
Continue reading ‘You mean we have to pay for our own water?’ »
I have a prediction: clarifying the science will not settle the political argument over the proposed Cadiz water project in the deserts of California. Chris Clarke wrote this today about Cadiz, a proposal to pump water from beneath the Mojave Desert and pipe it to coastal Southern California cities: According to an independent hydrologists’ evaluation …