Water’s for makin’ beer?
In response to the latest abuse of the Twain whiskey/water non-quote*, this: * Breitler 2011
Archive of posts filed under the water category.
Vegas housing woes
A couple of notes from Las Vegas, NV, the front line of the housing collapse, that have significant implications for the region’s long term water future: New home sales in 2011 were one tenth the number at the peak of the housing boom in 2005. The Las Vegas Review Journal quoted Pat Mulroy the other …
Water in the desert: rainwater harvesting in the Manzanos
River Beat: a forecast for decline on the Colorado again this year
It’s all fun and games until you actually have to measure snow. The US Bureau of Reclamation’s first 2012 Colorado Basin reservoir forecast (the “24-month study”, pdf) projects a decline in total storage in lakes Mead and Powell, the Colorado River’s largest storage reservoirs, of 844,000 acre feet, or 2.76 percent. There are two ways …
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Amid uncertainty, IID bumps up fallowing $’s
While archaeological metaphor can be instructive, I think we make more progress in understanding the fate of the Southwest under conditions of aridity and water scarcity by looking at what’s happening now, in the places that are really running short of water. What are people actually doing today? Which is why the Imperial Valley of …
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Commodity prices and the economics of fallowing
One of the most promising strategies for water conservation in the arid west involves fallowing of agricultural lands. Done badly, it has earned the pejorative nickname “buy and dry”, as cities buy up ag water rights, take the land out of production and shift the water to urban toilets and taps. But done right – …
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Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Albuquerque water use down in 2011
It’s not a big drop, but in the face of drought and modest population growth, Albuquerque’s water use dropped in 2011. From the morning paper: The drop was tiny — less than 1 percent. But with Albuquerque weathering one of its driest years in history in 2011, the consumption drop is significant, said Katherine Yuhas, …
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Dust and North American megadrought
The Lamont-Doherty group that has done so much to help our understanding of the factors that drive multi-decadal droughts has added a nice piece to our understanding of the issues. In a paper in review (for which they’ve done a nice accessible writeup), Ben Cook and colleagues looked at a number of drivers for long-duration …
It’s the landscaping, stupid
In communities that fully reuse their wastewater (Albuquerque and Las Vegas do this now, for example, by returning sewage treatment effluent to the water’s source), it’s outdoor water use that dominates the water supply equation. And here in the arid southwest, sooner or later everyone will fully reuse their wastewater. This is not an argument …
In praise of the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center
I’m a fan of NOAA’s Colorado Basin River Forecast Center. Here’s an example of why. In working on my book, I’ve been spending a lot of time tracking the hydrology of the Colorado River Basin – how much precipitation falls, and where, and when. The CBRFC has great data and great tools to help. Last …
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