In an interview with Sacramento’s Capital Report, California resources secretary John Laird got off the water wonks’ quip of a lifetime: Water is the Rubik’s Cube of public policy. It will be quoted for all eternity. But really, it’s a lousy metaphor. Here’s the meat of what he said: The thing that probably works to …
Continue reading ‘Water: Why “the Rubik’s Cube of public policy” misses the point’ »
Great job by Jay Lund in unpacking the issue of California water storage – how much it has, how it’s used and what role it might play going forward: Climate warming is reducing the ability of California’s snowpack to store water seasonally. Fortunately, downstream reservoirs on many streams are already large compared to seasonal changes …
NASA’s great Earth Observatory published satellite images of the Aral Sea showing changes over the last year as the sea (really four distinct bodies of water now) shrinks as water that once flowed in is diverted for human consumptive use. Which led me, thanks to a helpful twitter tip, to this great pair of satellite …
From Steven Solomon’s Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization: So closely correlated was river management and governing power that the very Chinese character for “politics” is derived from root words meaning flood control.
I’m all for a serious discussion about the costs and benefits of desalination as a source of water supply in the arid southwestern United States. But I find this argument, from Ted Owen of the Carlsbad, Calif., Chamber of Commerce, less than helpful: Jobs. Everyone in business and government is talking about the need to …
Wayne Bossert, who manages the Northwest Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 4 on the famed Ogallala Aquifer, raised the interesting issue recently in testimony at a Senate field hearing of the effect of federal agricultural policy on water: Historically the farm bill has been blamed for promoting fencerow-to-fencerow corn production due to it’s design and …
In a hard-hitting exposé, the Desert Sun earlier this month seems to have conclusively cleared the Salton Sea of charges that it smells really bad: The smell seemed to be everywhere — except the place where people usually think it comes from. A pungent, sewer-like odor in the air was noted Friday morning by people …
Continue reading ‘Newspaper exonerates Salton Sea of charges it stinks. Or does it?’ »
The question of how much water we’ll need in the Southwest going forward is dominated by uncertainty over what future population growth will look like. And I confess that I’ve got no earthly idea how to think well about this question. Consider Phoenix. In his new ebook The Gated City, Ryan Avent argues that Phoenix …
For the current water year, Oct. 1, 2010, through the end of August, I’ve had 4.39 inches (11.15 cm) of rain at my house in Albuquerque’s near northeast heights. That’s 51 percent of the mean going back to the 1999-2000 water year. Just one of the months, December, was above my long term mean, and …
Climate change and the resulting changes in rivers flows pose significant problems for transboundary water management agreements. But a new paper by Heather Cooley and Peter Gleick at the Pacific Institute finds a hopeful model in recent tweaks adding flexibility in the face of drought to the “Law of the River” governing distribution of water …
Continue reading ‘The Law of the River as a model for dealing with the loss of stationarity’ »