Sean Olson this morning discusses a proposal to raise (sort of) our water rates (warning: complex ad wall if you click): For the households that keep the taps running 24-7, now might be the time to start tucking more money under the mattress. The city-county water authority is proposing a new rate structure that would …
More when I have time, but for now, since this is a blog and we’re supposed to be on top of things, some stuff I wrote elsewhere: The Colorado River will be too small to meet the needs of its users three years out of five, or more, by mid-century, according to new research. Some …
A discussion of the Colorado River over at Tom Yulsman’s blog led to a helpful post on the consumption side of the ledger: According to a 2008 study published in Water Resources Research (subscription required for full text), Lake Mead already is being overdrawn by 1 million acre feet of water per year.
Henry Brean, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, caught something remarkable in the latest monthly reservoir operations plan published by the Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado River region office. By next month, Lake Mead will drop below 1,100 feet above sea level in surface elevation – the first time it has dropped below that …
I only know what I read in the paper these days about the Metropolitan Water District, Southern California’s giant water wholesaler. But it sure looks from this LA Times story as though the Met is trying to use market mechanisms to impose a 10 percent reduction in deliveries: The Metropolitan Water District, which imports water …
Continue reading ‘Southern California Cutbacks: A Market Mechanism’ »
When I install a low-flow toilet, I use less water each time I flush. In the arid West, this is a good thing, right? Maybe. Maybe not. In Albuquerque, essentially every gallon I flush, after treatment at our sewage plant, ends up in the river, available for downstream users. It’s called “return flow credit”, and …
IMG_0252 Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. That’s the Rio Grande you see there – the entire Rio Grande, as it leaves Cochiti Dam 40 river miles north of Albuquerque. It was flowing at about 1,000 cubic feet per second today when Lissa and I drove by during a Sunday wander. Cochiti, completed in the early 1970s, …
Aaron Million and his Wyoming-Colorado water pipeline idea have been around a while. They’re still here. I’m not inclined to pay a whole lot of credence to his idea of piping gobs of water from Wyoming to meet the demand in growing Front Range cities. But he’s still at it, having persuaded the feds to …
V.B. Price, in the Independent, has a must-read rumination on water constraints in middle Rio Grande planning: Is the notion of “reinventing cities” in the American West less about new rail and other transportation infrastructure than it is about finally being honest about water and doing something about it? But what could be done? Must …
On the political tension over water conservation: Why should I save water when all it does is enable more sprawl?