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 …
A bunch of Colorado and Wyoming municipal water utilities apparently hope to gang up on entrepreneur Aaron Million, hatching a pipeline scheme of their own to pipe water across the continental divide to growing front range cities. From Bobby Magill at the Coloradan: Move over, Aaron Million. A coalition of municipal water suppliers from the …
Continue reading ‘Colorado has a new interbasin transfer idea’ »
Any western water wonks in the audience headed to Vegas in April for the Implications of Lower Lake Levels Symposium? Leave a comment or email me, and maybe we can meet up at the Bellagio fountains and crack wise.
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’ »