Borrowing a page from Emily Green’s book, I’m trying (again) a sporadic roundup of some of the interesting water things I’ve been reading: Henry Brean on the potential effect of the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s pumping plans on Great Basin National Park: “I’d like them to know that we’re extremely concerned — very concerned — …
I love Jon Stewart’s television program, but it’s rare that he does a subject of direct relevance to my little blogoworld. But last week, he did water. Specifically, a look at a Fox News discussion of the complex public policy questions surrounding California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs …
Unbeknownst to me, Thursday was the centennial of the first electricity flowing from the generators at Roosevelt Dam, arguably the first great dam of the modern era in the West. Located 60 miles up the Salt River from Phoenix, it was the highest dam in the world when it was built, according to Donald Worster’s …
Water wonks: I’m spending a few days in and around Phoenix later this month. Any suggestions for water infrastructure tourism?
Back in the 1970s, Congress asked the Bureau of Reclamation to study the feasibility of extending a water line across western New Mexico to carry water from the San Juan River to Gallup, New Mexico. Gallup’s a desert city, dependent on a limited aquifer. Gallup sits on the edge of the Navajo Reservation. The Navajos …
Continue reading ‘Navajo-Gallup Water Project Moves Several Inches Forward’ »
Where I’d be Oct. 22-23 if I had plane fare, registration fees and a few free days (none of which I have): Water and Land for Renewable Energy in the Southwest.
While much of the discussion of “new water” in the western United States involves desalination of seawater, there’s an experiment getting underway outside Albuquerque that is part of a new approach to the problem: desalination of brackish groundwater. My colleague Rosalie Rayburn has a story in the Albuquerque Journal on the latest testing going on …
Tom Beal has a story in the Arizona Daily Star that captures a couple of related realities one finds these days in the western water community. One is that climate change is the real deal. It’s easy to go on quibbling about the attribution problem, but the Colorado River is mostly drier these days than …
Continue reading ‘Stationarity Really, Most Sincerely Dead’ »
The experimental restart of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Yuma Desalting Plant, which should get underway after the first of the year, is more than a technical experiment in operating the big desalination equipment. It is, I think more importantly, a fascinating experiment in cross-border collaboration, as I describe in this morning’s paper (sub/ad req): Beginning …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: The Colorado River Delta’ »
I love history as a journalistic storytelling technique for two reasons. First, it often can provide built-in context. Second, it can provide a natural narrative arc. So when I sat down Friday with Mike Connor, the new head of the Bureau of Reclamation, I tried to frame his job today in terms of the western …