One of my new tricks when looking at western water problems is to pose the question: “What is the failure mode?” It’s clear that on many scales, both temporal and geographic, we’ve got supply-demand imbalances. It’s easy to point that out and call the system unsustainable, to point out that we’re headed for a crash. …
The results of a couple of trips north last week into the flood zone in the canyons below the watersheds burned by the Las Conchas fire (sub/ad req): In Cochiti Canyon, a New Mexico Environment Department team estimated the Aug. 21 flow that caused the first round of damage at Dixon’s at 12,000 cubic feet …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: on the power of moving water’ »
If you’ve driven the stretch of Interstate 40 across northern Arizona between Gallup and Holbrook, you’ve perhaps seen the signs for a place called Goodwater. If you’ve not, trust me – there’s not much good water around those parts. The story of human settlement in the region is the story of the struggle for good …
Jay Lund and colleagues have modeled a range of possible impacts of climate change on flood flows in California. From a nice summary on the UC Davis California WaterBlog: Warming generally worsened flood inflows into reservoirs. Even with less precipitation, warmer conditions often increased flood inflows to reservoirs. When more precipitation fell as rain, rather …
A river is not just in one place. It extends in time up and down its watershed. Last night, Daniel Porter at the Albuquerque National Weather Service office sent out an alert of possible flooding on Peralta Canyon, which enters the Rio Grande about 40 miles north of Albuquerque. Its watershed was burned in the …
Continue reading ‘Water in the desert: blackwater edition’ »
New Mexico’s in the midst of a tense and interesting discussion about the Rio Grande silvery minnow, the Endangered Species Act and managing the Rio Grande. I’ve got a post up over at the work blog going meta on the underlying issues – why I think ESA discussions have become our proxy discussions for big …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: water policy and the endangered species act’ »
John Bass today argues for clarity in our use of language when talking about a water conveyance around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta: Could I ask that Dan Bacher and those he quotes use the term “canal” when referring to a canal to take water around the Delta, the term “tunnel” for the other option under …
Continue reading ‘The case for calling it a “Peripheral Thingie”’ »
From NASA’s Earth Observatory, Lake Powell at Hite this month compared to a year ago: h/t David Appell
Over at the Lane Center, a look at what the extra water on the Colorado River means: While Colorado Basin water users had survived 11 years of drought without suffering shortages, simply by draining their two big reservoirs, US Bureau of Reclamation calculations raised the clear possibility that by next year, the first ever shortage …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Bonus Water on the Colorado’ »
I was really struck by something in this video. Not the PR message, though I’ve no doubt San Franciscan water the cleanest water in the whole world! No, it’s the remarkable beauty of water.