A friend recently described a New Mexico water rights battle currently underway as a “water lawyers stimulus act.” I was reminded of that reading Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps describing John Wesley Powell’s thinking regarding the division of the West’s water: Powell’s warning at an irrigation congress in 1883 seems particularly prescient: “Gentlemen, you are …
There have been a series of helpful exchanges, in the comments here as well as elsewhere on the web, between economist David Zetland and Francis, a veteran of California’s water policy world. Zetland is a bright and articulate advocate for the use of market mechanisms to solve the thorny problem of water distribution under conditions …
Continue reading ‘On the Difficulty of Fixing Water Problems’ »
In Colossus, Michael Hiltzik makes nice use of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s dedication address 75 years ago atop Hoover Dam. Inspired, I went back and found a copy of the text to pull a quote for a newspaper column. Roosevelt said this: We are here to celebrate the completion of the greatest dam in the world, …
It’s still early in the season, so this doesn’t mean a lot, but it at least means a little (click to blow it up big enough to read – blue line is average, red line is last year, green line is this year to date): This is a handy graph from the Colorado Basin River …
One of my Twitter friends (I wish I could remember who to share credit) pointed out how much this photo, taken last month by an unnamed member of the International Space Station crew, tells us about rivers and human society:
Folks on the Colorado River upstream of Lake Mead are sounding a little nervous. Dennis Webb had a very nice piece in the Grand Junction Sentinel over the weekend taking stock. Meet Colorado rancher Carlyle Currier: When he hears that Lake Mead’s water level is at a historic low, he worries about the degree to …
From the morning paper, a quick look at the New Mexico Court of Appeals decision on the state’s domestic well statute (sub/ad req): New Mexico’s law giving homeowners the right to drill their own water well is legal and does not unfairly harm other water users in violation of the state constitution, according to the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: The “Festering Issue” of NM Domestic Wells’ »
My education in economics included a lot of discussion of the importance of clarity in property rights regimes. You’ve got to know who owns what. New Mexico water law in this regard is a tangled mess. In large areas of the state, we lack formal adjudication of water rights. We do know some things about …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: NM Water Rights Ruling’ »
Ed Polasko had a great comment on one of my recent Lake Mead posts that I thought was worth elevating. I was riffing on the lack of public understanding, even in the face of Mead’s dropping levels, of the drought and water use problem facing the West. Ed’s response: For the average Joe/Mary, drought will …
Osha Gray Davidson, writing about yesterday’s Blythe Solar Power Project announcement, highlights a key issue: [T]he project will now have a much smaller “water footprint” thanks to a decision to use air cooling, which consumes no water, at the cost of somewhat reduced efficiency. Cynthia Barnett, a noted water expert and author, calls the Blythe …
Continue reading ‘Energy and Water in the California Desert’ »