I love the New York Times for many reasons. This line from their editorial about Hetch Hetchy, the Yosemite reservoir serving Sacramento, is one of them: Ninety-nine years ago, this newspaper argued against the construction of the dam. We lost, but the much bigger loss was nature’s. That’s owning your heritage.
There are three interlocking fundamental federal water policy/politics principles that are important to understanding current discussions over California congressman Devin Nunes’ legislation aimed at reshaping the distribution of water flowing through his state’s Central Valley. First, federal subsidy has long been necessary for the big water projects that make the West as we know it …
Just when you thought the clown car that is California water politics was empty, out pops a San Francisco ballot initiative to drain Hetch Hetchy: The measure, which would be submitted to the San Francisco city attorney next week, would require the city to embark on a process to put itself “on a path toward …
Continue reading ‘“our San Franciscan water the cleanest water in the whole world!”’ »
From the morning newspaper: One of the problems I have with the persistence of the not-Twain quote is a long history in the West of not fighting over water. Faced with potential conflicts among states over the rivers they share, for example, we developed a series of “compacts” — essentially treaties governing how to distribute …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: not-Twain bait and switch’ »
Jennifer Pitt sounds an optimistic note about the possibility that the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River Basin Study could reclaim some priority for the retention of water in the rivers of the Colorado River Basin: The future of this region promises to be more crowded, and likely hotter and drier, but that doesn’t have to …
Continue reading ‘Bureau of Reclamation and water in the rivers’ »
As the national media descends on the tiny Texas community of Spicewood Beach to capture the spectacle of water trucked to a thirsty town, I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit the question of what we have learned so far from the impact of the Texas drought. I tried to make a pie chart …
At 0.38 inch (0.97 cm), January 2012 was the second consecutive month at my house with above average precipitation. Here’s a map of New Mexico right now: I live in that brown bit in the middle.
One of democracy’s great shortcomings, on display these days especially in California, is that we want the government to provide the stuff that we want, but we’d just as soon not pay for it: Local officials say they need the money to upgrade outdated water-treatment facilities, sewer lines and water mains. In some cases, improvements …
My search for folks working the solution space alights on the growing enthusiasm in New Mexico for wastewater reuse: In other states, especially water-short Arizona and Southern California, cleaning up sewage and reusing it in new and creative ways is becoming common. And in less obvious ways, by returning sewage effluent to New Mexico’s rivers, …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: wastewater reuse’ »
Climate scientist Tamsin Edwards triggered a fascinating discussion when she chose the famous George Box quote – “all models are wrong, but some are useful” – as the name for her new blog. In a delightful exchange on Twitter (which I followed in real time and which Edwards quotes extensively in the blog post linked …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River models: wrong but useful’ »