I’ve written in the past about the importance of the notion of moving water from where it wants to be. A lot of our problems seem to happen when we do that, because water wants to be where it wants to be, and its powerful urges are difficult to resist. My past discussions have focused …
Friday’s release of the National Academy study on pumping restrictions in the California Bay-Delta system on behalf of endangered fish offers a great case study in “scientization,” the process by which competing political factions repurpose scientific findings to meet their political needs. The panel concluded that the pumping restrictions are scientifically justified, a blow for …
Continue reading ‘Scientization: Delta Smelt, a Case Study’ »
Albuquerque’s per capita water consumption continues to drop (sub/ad req): Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority customers used an average of 159 gallons per capita per day in 2009, down from 252 gallons in 1994, when the community’s water conservation efforts began, according to Katherine Yuhas, head of the utility’s water conservation program. Yuhas and …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: ABQ Water Consumption Declining’ »
From today’s newspaper, my story (sub/ad req) about a Senate hearing earlier this week that touched on a study of water supply and demand now getting underway in the Colorado River Basin. The story’s brief, but the hearing raised what I think is a very interesting question: While individual states have looked at their own …
Continue reading ‘Concerns About New Colorado River Study’ »
It is a testament to the nature of rivers in the arid western United States that this is news: The San Joaquin River is flowing from Friant Dam near Fresno to the Delta…. That’s Alex Breitler writing today in the Stockton Record. If you follow the link, he gives a pretty good accounting of why …
As drought grips the Lancang-Mekong basin in Asia, tensions are growing over China’s dam, according to Richard Stone, writing in Friday’s Science (sub req): The drought’s effects have spilled across China’s borders, stoking tensions with neighbors and prompting scientific debate. Rice yields in Thailand are expected to take a big hit, and the Mekong River—the …
In theory, one of the benefits of interbasin water transfers is spreading risk. One basin may have drought while the other does not. But for folks on the Arkansas River in Colorado, that may not work out so well, based on new tree ring analysis by Jeff Lukas and colleagues. Chris Woodka of the Pueblo …
I noticed the lilacs starting to leaf out in our backyard this afternoon. We moved the weather station last week, so I’m not sure what 65F (18C) means, but that’s what the thermometer says. (Anthony Watts would no doubt disapprove of its current location in the corner by the back wall, but my old cotton …
It’s looking increasingly likely that we’ll see history this summer, of the dry, unpleasant sort, on Lake Mead. With a meager snowpack in the Upper Green and Upper Colorado, the chances of a water surplus in the Upper Colorado River Basin that would allow an extra dollop of the wet stuff for Lake Mead have …
Continue reading ‘How Low Can Mead Go? Let’s Talk Come June’ »
Another example of the conflicts that occur when we move water from one basin to another, this one from here in New Mexico: Stella Davis in the Carlsbad Current-Argus talks about the negative reaction from folks in the Pecos River Basin to a proposal to build a pipeline to ship groundwater from the Fort Sumner …