When Lissa and I were up in Santa Fe a few months back, I took along the binoculars and took a walk along the Santa Fe River as it passes the old city’s downtown, hunting birds. I found few. Because it’s not much of a river, really. As David Groenfeldt notes, there’s an effort underway …
From the morning paper, a look at the way this year’s drought has laid bare a Byzantine argument over how to properly divide up the waters of the Lower Rio Grande between Texas and New Mexico farmers (sub/ad req.): Water flows down the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico today, past parched farmers who cannot …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: A Feud Over Lower Rio Grande Water Distribution’ »
I’ve triggered some puzzlement among California water folks as I call around trying to understand the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in preparation for my trip out there next month. Why does a New Mexican care? Other than the fact that it’s fascinating, of course. I mean what water wonk wouldn’t be fascinated by California’s water problems. …
Continue reading ‘Why Some NM Schlub Cares About the Sacramento Delta’ »
The drama on the Mississippi has spawned a lot of good writing on the disconnect between how nature thinks about flood plains versus how we think about them. As Anne Jefferson wrote, the bits next to our rivers tend to be the most desirable places to live: People are drawn to settle on floodplains – …
From the morning paper, a wander in the bosque to look for signs of drought (sub/ad req.): There is a resilience, it turns out, to these desert ecosystems. They’re used to this happening every so often, and they know what to do in response. Some leaf out less, or leaf out later. Some depend on …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Lessons from a Drought’ »
Jeffrey Mount and Jay Lund (UC Davis water guys) draw lessons for California from Morganza and the lower Mississippi: In the Central Valley, those in the floodplain operate under an old adage: You hope that the other guy’s levee fails first. For political, economic and legal reasons, our institutions have been unable to move beyond …
How dry is it this year in New Mexico? So dry that rafters on the Rio Chama will have to use spare drinking water, pumped through the system weekends this spring and summer, for their fun. From Friday’s ABQJournal (sub/ad req, I think): Albuquerque has to move its water supplies down the Rio Chama sometime, …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Rafting on Drinking Water’ »
There’s a myth that has firmly taken hold of a busted La Niña forecast on the Colorado River this year. It shows up this morning in a Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial. No. This issue came up last September, as we were heading into the La Niña season. It was a common misapprehension back then, and …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: The Myth of a Busted La Niña Forecast’ »
I’m a big fan of beat reporting – steady, day-in, day-out attention to a topic. I love to do it, and when I’m trying to learn a new topic, the first place I turn is to the beat reporters who cover it. Today’s example is the Stockton Record’s Alex Breitler, who cut through the noise …
The latest USBR monthly Colorado River is out, and just wow. From Shaun McKinnon: In its latest 24-month report, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation added almost 1 million acre-feet to the estimated amount of water that will be released from Lake Powell downstream into Mead, the wetter forecast possible because of near-record snowpack on the …
Continue reading ‘River beat: what a difference a month makes’ »