David O. Williams highlights what’s likely to be one of the central struggles in managing our twin energy and water problems – the water needed if oil shale is going to be tapped to head off peak oil. Peak water, in other words, collides with peak oil: But numerous studies have indicated full-scale commercial oil …
Friday bird blogging: in which I visit the sewage treatment plant and see nature. (Trying to lighten up the wonkery at the work blog.) Albuquerque’s water future: in which I invoke Zetland’s argument regarding the western approach to water planning, as it applies to Albuquerque’s mayoral politics.
Kelly Zito has an intriguing look at California water managemente in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, looking at the incredibly disjointed way urban-suburban Northern California’s system is managed as compared to the relatively centralized role of the Metropolitan Water District in Southern California: Ana Sarver jogs 5 miles along the Contra Costa Canal every day. But …
My friend Andrew told me the story of Hite, Utah, left high and dry as Lake Powell’s levels dropped. Lissa and I went through there on our recent vacation, and I was so struck by the place that I scraped together the details of Hite’s abandonement and turned it into a newspaper story: HITE, UTAH …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: What I Did On My Summer Vacation’ »
Earlier in the week, I made fun of those wimpy North Carolinians for going into drought tizzy after a few weeks without rain. But there is no similar fun to be had in Texas, where the red blotches on the weekly drought monitor maps keep growing:
Drought’s a funny thing. Take North Carolina (hi Dave!), which in general averages about 50 inches (125 cm) of rain per year. To a hardened desert dweller like me, it’s inconceivable that a 40 inch year (the great drought of ’07) could be anything other than a mild inconvenience. But drought is really all about …
Doug MacEachern has a fascinataing discussion in today’s Arizona Republic about the canals of Phoenix. I remember being struck the first time I visited Phoenix by these strange concrete waterways. I’d driven up to the north end of town to make a pilgrimage to the (sorta) Frank Lloyd Wright Biltmore, an oasis of a thing …
Continue reading ‘Water in the Desert: Benefits Left Untapped’ »
Does solar energy have a water problem? That’s the question I tried to address in this story (sub. req. sorta) over at the day job: Look at any map of U.S. solar energy resources, and you will see a band stretching from southern New Mexico across Arizona and into California that shows promise. Solar energy …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Solar Water Edition’ »
The irony here is just too rich: Fearing the main canal carrying drinking water to millions of Southern Californians is sinking again, water officials are monitoring the effects of incessant agricultural pumping from the aquifer that runs under the aqueduct. Their concern is that the canal, which has sunk six feet in places during California …
Continue reading ‘Groundwater Pumping Undermining Surface Canal?’ »
Who knew California had a source of free water, right under its very nose! The cheapest source of water is fresh groundwater, which costs only 4 cents per gallon, but it is not always present in local aquifers. Groundwater tastes just like imported water, uses less electricity to distribute because it is pumped closer to …