Archive of posts filed under the water category.

Not Everyone Thought Irrigating the Salton Sink was a good idea

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Reading the late 19th and early 20th century literature of the Colorado Desert, one could be forgiven for thinking there was a certain inevitability of the massive irrigation works that so changed the Salton Sink (renamed with characteristic enthusiasm as “Imperial Valley”.) It still seems inevitable. It was the time of manifest destiny, of “reclamation”. …

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Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: PCBs in the Rio Grande

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Greetings from the not-so-wilds of Taos, New Mexico, where I picked up this morning’s Albuquerque Journal to find this (sub/ad req), on the surprising discovery of PCBs in the Rio Grande just downstream from the main Albuquerque storm water outfall: If the nuclear weapons lab were responsible, dealing with this problem would be simpler. Attentive …

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Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Kirtland Fuel Spill Update

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From this morning’s paper, an update on the Kirtland Air Force Base jet fuel spill (sub/ad req.): State regulators on Friday denied the Air Force a requested 45-day extension on a deadline to turn in plans to deal with a jet fuel spill threatening Albuquerque groundwater. “Urgent action needs to be taken to address this …

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Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Jet Fuel Leak

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Which spill to cover? Some environmental journalism tradecraft here. There is a nagging problem for reporters who cover contamination problems. As a society, we spill nasty shit all the time, in all sorts of places, from the sheen of oil and lead wheel weight residues on our streets to the nitrates beneath dairies to the …

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G.K. Gilbert and the changing Great Salt Lake

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One of my favorite stories of early western water science is the clever way geologist G.K. Gilbert, in the 19th century, used the rise and fall of the Great Salt Lake as a proxy for decadal-scale climate variability. Here’s how I told the story in my book: The lake has no outlent, and so the only …

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River Beat: Why Is Lake Mead Dropping?

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Easy answer to the question asked in the title of this post, right? The last decade is the driest 10-year stretch since record keeping began on the Colorado River. Of course Lake Mead has dropped because of “drought”, right? No. During that entire time, thanks to upstream storage and the fact that Upper Basin consumption …

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