We see this over and over again. Generally speaking, water is free to municipal/industrial customers in the United States. What we pay in our water bill is for the cost of delivery – the pumps and pipes. We’re paying for water delivery infrastructure, not the commodity itself. But we nevertheless generally price the water by …
Continue reading ‘Conservation and the water pricing dilemma’ »
An economic analysis released last week suggested a Peripheral Tunnel to move California’s water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta could create 129,000 jobs. (Good Alex Breitler story lays out the details.) The boosters at the Southern California Water Committee jumped on the argument: This new jobs study on the tunnel options is the first major …
Continue reading ‘After we’re done with the Peripheral Tunnel, pyramids!’ »
A group with one set of interests in California water has tried to frame the discussion over how much water can be diverted from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in the classic “farmers vs. fish” framework. Others disagree. Traditional “view from nowhere” journalism quotes one from Column A and one from Column B and calls it …
Continue reading ‘Mike Taugher tells us what’s really going on with Sacramento Delta diversions’ »
The premise of a piece I wrote recently over at the Lane Center was that folks in the Colorado River’s Upper Basin are all elbowing up to the front of the line to try to get the next straw slurping water out of the big river before it’s too late. The focus was on the …
Irony defined: sitting in the shaded courtyard at work yesterday at lunch, next to a lovely fountain/pond flanked by lush lawn, reading the opening chapter of Cynthia Barnett’s Blue Revolution: Sacramento landscape architect Ronald Allison tells of a two-and-a-half-acre residential design in Granite Bay with a waterfall, a grotto, a cave, six fountains, a pool …
Continue reading ‘Irony defined: Barnett’s “Blue Revolution” at the office pond’ »
While we all understand the market distortions caused in the United States by government subsidies for irrigation water, Michael Campana raises an interesting question about the international implications. Quoting a talk at the XIV World Water Congress by Paul Stanton Kibel of the Center on Urban Environmental Law (“CVP” is the Central Valley Project in …
Continue reading ‘The international implications of U.S. water subsidies’ »
John Bass made a great point in a recent comment thread at Delta National Park that highlights one of my frustrations about California water discussions: [I]f basic facts are contentious, then the problem isn’t facts. The comment was triggered by a point the California Farm Water Coalition’s Mike Wade made regarding an editorial that ran …
Continue reading ‘We’re in trouble when we’re arguing about the numbers’ »
In honor of World Rivers Day, I rode my bike down to check out the Rio Grande through Albuquerque this morning. That’s really a bit of a cheat. Most weekends I end up riding my bike down to check out the Rio Grande at least once, but it’s World Rivers Day, and water nerds are …
If you think California’s water problems look bad now, just wait. That seems to be the message of a new study by a team from the USGS, Scripps, Berkeley and elsewhere who ran detailed simulations of climate change scenarios on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta/San Francisco Bay system. The project provides a useful exercise, not in …
Continue reading ‘Climate change and California water: a bad situation likely to get worse’ »
A wise scientist once remarked on the burnable properties of wood: BEDEMIR: Tell me, what do you do with witches? VILLAGER #2: Burn! CROWD: Burn, burn them up! BEDEMIR: And what do you burn apart from witches? VILLAGER #1: More witches! VILLAGER #2: Wood! BEDEMIR: So, why do witches burn? [pause] VILLAGER #3: B–… ’cause …