The June 1 Colorado Basin forecasts are out, and, as expected, there’s been no miracle. The inflow into Lake Powell looks pretty much exactly like it did a month ago, minus the chance of a miraculous late snow rescue or the flip side chance of some sort of terrible collapse: The blue bar is average, …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: 2010 snow season all over save the melting’ »
I had a hugely lucky moment this morning while I was riding my bike down by the river. The bike trail parallels one of the riverside drains, small canals that flank the Rio Grande through the Albuquerque reach. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted an enormous bird, lunging at something in the …
Continue reading ‘Endangered Species, Endangered Ecosystems’ »
From this morning’s newspaper, a visit with John Horning to the railroad bridge at San Marcial (sub/ad req.), one of the choke points that prevents high flows on the Middle Rio Grande through central New Mexico: The railroad bridge, and similar spots where too much water could damage property, prevent the high spring flows that …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: the bridge at San Marcial’ »
The surface of Lake Mead is at 1094.30 feet above sea level, the lowest June 1 reading since 1937, when it was first being filled. All I can say is it could be worse. That’s six inches higher than the forecast in the most recent 24-Month Study, the planning document used by the U.S. Bureau …
Kudos to the University of San Diego’s Watchdog Institute for producing, and to the Imperial Valley Press for running, an excellent look at what’s at stake in the upcoming Imperial Irrigation District election. IID, the irrigation agency formed in 1911 to take over the interests of commercial water developers on the California side of the …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: “This makes ‘Chinatown’ look like high school.”’ »
The JAWRA blog had a post Friday on something that I’ve found maddeningly difficult to explain to newspaper readers: the cases where water conservation efforts don’t really save the water one intuitively thinks they do: Lining a canal, for example, may seem like “saving” water, but not if the leakage is replenishing a stressed aquifer. …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: When Saving Water is Not What It Seems’ »
We arid climate types like to think we own water problems, but a new EU report serves as a reminder that they’re universal. People build their infrastructure and societal systems around the water they’ve got and then bump up against limits. From EurActive: The report shows that some member states have begun to suffer “permanent …
Continue reading ‘It’s not just the dry places that are going dry’ »
When the Colorado River Compact was negotiated in 1922 to divide the river’s flow among the seven western U.S. states that span its basin, the representatives of the upper basin states were driven by the realization that they weren’t using much water at the time, but some day they would want to. Under western U.S. …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: The View From the Head of the Stream’ »
From the morning newspaper (sub/ad req), a look at water flowing through the woods: Michael Porter made an auspicious discovery one morning this week in the waterlogged Rio Grande woods — silvery minnows. For a week, high flows have brought water into newly created habitat on the river’s west side, south of Central, and the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: More Water in the Desert than Usual’ »
If you’re in Albuquerque, it’s a great weekend to go out and see your river. The Rio Grande is flowing at nearly 6,000 cubic feet per second through the city right now (Saturday evening, 5/22), courtesy of a spike flow to help Rio Grande silvery minnow spawning. The high flows allow water to get out …
Continue reading ‘Water in the Desert: High Flows on the Rio Grande’ »