Archive of posts filed under the water category.
Just Add Water
I was interviewing a local flood control engineer recently about the lovely little wetland that’s grown up in a retention pond up near my work. It’s located just off one of the channels that carries flood flows down through the city, and its primary purpose is to catch and hold water for a while to …
It’s Vegas, Baby
I don’t know if anyone else reads this stuff, or if we’re just talking to one another, but a quartet of the waterbloggers piled on a today on the Vegas (Nev.) water situation. The back story involves Southern Nevada water impresario Pat Mulroy, who wants to bring water across the state to feed her growing …
CAP Water Data On Line
For you down-in-the-weeds water wonks, the Central Arizona Project is now posting its monthly delivery reports.
Groundwater Mining in India
A couple of new papers out this week use a clever technique to quantify what looks like extraordinary groundwater mining going on in India. Groundwater pumping is a classic “tragedy of the commons.” In the long run, it’s best not to mine groundwater, to pump it in a modest and therefore sustainable fashion. But any …
Cadiz
I’ve been out of the loop for much of the last week, and at this point it’s likely that everyone who follows western water issues has already seen Emily Green’s post on the Cadiz groundwater project. If you haven’t, I recommend it. Cadiz is the proposal to do something that is a bit murky with …
Mulroy Calls For Vegas Water Vote
It’s hard to resist the gunslinger metaphor when reading Henry Brean’s story about Pat Mulroy’s Las Vegas water pipe ultimatum: To shore up support for a controversial project, Southern Nevada Water Authority chief Pat Mulroy will ask her board for an “up-or-down vote” on plans to pipe groundwater to Las Vegas from across rural eastern …
Arizona Groundwater
Shaun McKinnon, the Arizona Republic’s water guy, has a must-read piece in the paper’s Sunday edition about his state’s groundwater situation: Thirty years after Arizona tried to stop cities and towns from using up their groundwater, the state still can’t shake its thirst for one of its most finite resources. The steady drain on underground …
Actual or Virtual Water?
The wonks call it “virtual water” – the water consumed elsewhere that is embodied in an imported product. When I grow a tomato in my yard, it’s a bit hard to sort out, molecule by molecule, where the water comes from. Right now, about three quarters of the molecules come from mined groundwater, and one …
On Groundwater Management
New Mexico water law is a tangle in many ways, not least of which is our inability to adjudicate water rights and therefore implement priority calls to restrict usage when there is not enough water to go around. But in one area, we’re ahead of a number of other western states: the regulation of groundwater. …