As we enter a new era of U.S. fiscal austerity, in which some members of Congress push to foreswear the dreaded “earmark” (pork barrel funding), Kitty Felde points out the importance of the practice in western water development: In Congress, seniority is power. Senate historian Donald Ritchie says small states re-elect incumbents more often than …
When I was in Nevada last month, I heard from a number of lay people that the answer to a shrinking Lake Mead was simple: stop hoarding water upstream in Lake Powell. Henry Brean did a nice job today of explaining why it ain’t that simple – that the current lake levels (as of today …
Continue reading ‘It’s not as simple as just releasing more water from Lake Powell’ »
Related to my post the other day about the Drop 2 reservoir in southeastern California, and the increasing use of marginal (and frequently more expensive) water, Mike Hightower at Sandia Labs shared this graphic showing the expansion of wastewater reuse and desalination in the United States, current and projected:
So I appear to have jumped the gun last week in pronouncing the end of Lake Mead’s seasonal decline for 2010. As I write this morning, the lake surface is at 1081.92 feet above sea level, having fluttered below the 1082 mark during the past week for the first time since 1937. It’s now more …
Two different California water writers have offered what works by way of an answer to my question about the meaning of Westlands’ departure from the Bay Delta Conservation Plan discussions. Not so much a collapse, as a perfectly reasonable shrinkage? The first voice is Patricia McBroom, who does a writerly job of taking us in …
I claim no direct journalistic expertise in the California Bay-Delta water policy discussions currently underway. But in looking at it with my “institutional framework” hammer in hand (everything looks like a nail to me), it sure looks like a process doomed to failure. Take Mark Grossi’s latest in the Fresno Bee on Westlands’ decision to …
Continue reading ‘California Bay-Delta – Doomed to Failure?’ »
Steve Hannon tells the dramatic story of what nearly happened to Glen Canyon Dam during the great El Niño year of 1983, when heavy winter snows, then rain on that snow, caused Lake Powell to rise rapidly and exposed problems in Glen Canyon Dam’s spillways: The spillways had only operated for a few days when …
Arizona’s on the hunt for new water, and it won’t be cheap. Tony Davis covered this week’s meeting of the folks working on the program with one of my all time favorite government acronyms – Project ADD Water (that’s Acquisition, Development and Delivery). It’s the planning effort among Central Arizona Project players to find new …
You folks have already seen most of this, but for readers of what we call “the print product”, I pulled together today some of my thoughts about the draining of Lake Mead and its implications for New Mexico. I did this (perhaps not coincidentally) as I’ve been pulling together some thoughts to speak tonight at …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: My Visit to Lake Mead’ »
As I’ve mentioned before (and to remind that, despite my recent rant, I really do like a lot of David Zetland’s ideas!), the cost of coastal desalination represents one of the important boundary conditions on water supply in the western United States. In that regard, Sandra Dibble reports this week on four proposals in various …