The Cienega de Santa Clara, the one remaining major wetland in the Colorado River Delta, is not being drained as a result of Mexico’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake, according to Karl Flessa, the University of Arizona researcher who is part of a team monitoring the ecosystem. The area was hit hard by the earthquake. The San …
Continue reading ‘River Beat: Quake Didn’t Drain Cienega de Santa Clara’ »
LAS VEGAS, NEV – Walking up from our hotel to the strip in search of a place to eat last night, battered by neon and flashing lights, my dinner companion commented ruefully on how distant we were from nature. I suppose you could say that in the middle of any city, but in Las Vegas …
Continue reading ‘Water in the desert, Las Vegas edition II’ »
YUMA, ARIZ – On the Lower Colorado River, there are three large municipal water wholesalers behaving with a certain air of desperation in their hunt for long term supplies of water: the Southern Nevada Water Authority (Las Vegas), the Metropolitan Water District (Southern California) and the Central Arizona Project (Phoenix/Tucson). So who wants it bad? …
LAS VEGAS, NEV – The distance between Morelos Dam on the lower Colorado and the Bellagio Fountain is profound. Morelos spans the U.S.-Mexico border, with the wheat fields and onions of the Yuma County Water Users Association behind me as I took this picture and Algodones on the far bank. Most years, Morelos is where …
YUMA, ARIZ – There’s not much Colorado River left by the time it gets to Yuma, on the U.S.-Mexico border. But the folks here seem to embrace it, modest though it may be. Warm summer evening, and people are out floating, barbecuing, swimming and generally acting like they feel comfortable with their river: From Colorado …
When I first started to seriously cover Colorado River water, I kept going around to smart water people asking the same question: when we finally hit the wall, and there is less water in the Upper Colorado River Basin than needed to meet the states’ needs – a “call”, in the legal lingo – how …
Continue reading ‘The Implications of Uncertainty in Administering Upper Basin Shortage’ »
Intriguing comments by Brian Brady, general manager of the Imperial Irrigation District, during a hearing last week before the House Water and Power subcommittee held in Las Vegas: Rural areas like ours have their own plans for the future growth and development of their respective regions. Transfer too much water and you destroy your ability …
The Bureau of Reclamation Colorado River operations 24-month study (pdf) is out this afternoon, formally confirming what has been clear for some time: that this year’s release from Lake Powell will be 8.23 million acre feet, the minimum under current operating rules. Based on the current modeling (see page 11 of the pdf), this means …
With the Colorado River forecasts out this week, I’m ready to call it: there won’t be enough water in the river for an extra water release this year from Lake Powell to help bolster the levels in the shrinking Lake Mead. Those declining red dots, month by month in the graph above, tell the story. …
Every time we drove through a new subdivision on the edge of Albuquerque, my Dad used to ask the same question: “Where are they getting the water?” Tony Davis had a story in the Arizona Daily Star recently that showed the depth to which Arizona has failed to grapple with that question, essentially allowing subdivisions …