To Emily Green’s monthly dirge to document as well as accompany the declining levels of Lake Mead, I would add this: Mead’s end-of-October surface elevation, 1081.94 feet above sea level, was 1.31 feet below the level forecast just a month ago. Recall that 1075 is the trigger level for the first lower basin shortage declaration, …
Via Patricia McBroom, a fascinating look at a group studying tree rings in the redwoods along the Northern California coast for clues about climate: The plan is to chart the health of the trees over time and use laboratory analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes to figure out how the trees have reacted in the …
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 …