C.J. Brooks, a Tucson water geek and author of the “Watering the Desert Blog”, talks about the linkage between land use planning and water in Nevada. Washoe County has done the sort of thing advocates around here have been talking about ever since I started thinking seriously about water issues (and likely for a lot …
Today, the other shoe drops in the Journal’s coverage of Albuquerque’s new drinking water system: You will begin drinking, showering and watering your lawn with water from the Rio Grande soon, and there will be less water in the river as a result. What effect that will have on the Rio Grande, the ecosystem surrounding …
From Sean Olson: The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority flips the switch on its $385 million San Juan-Chama Drinking Water project, bringing treated river water directly into the homes of most Albuquerque-area residents.
Bruce Thomson, head of the water resources program at the University of New Mexico and a very smart guy, has a guest post on WaterWired about New Mexico’s brackish water gold rush: [W]e must insist that water dependent development in NM be sustainable. We may allow communities to tap into non-sustainable supplies such as deep …
Continue reading ‘On the Sustainability of Brackish Water’ »
We’ve got a brackish water rush going on in New Mexico, but Joel Gay points out today that the economic mess may slow things down: It will take tens of millions of dollars to turn any of the three reported supplies of brine into water fit for human consumption, and neither private nor public sources …
Continue reading ‘Brackish Water and the Investment Problem’ »
For a journalist, making fun of California is a fish-in-a-barrel sort of thing, especially when it comes to water. But this piece from the AP takes the fun an extra mile. Love the picture: Cookie Smith was surprised to learn the fake lawn that earned her a home-beautification award violated a city ban on artificial …
Drought does not only mean thirst and failed crops. In Kyrgyzstan it also means blackouts: The question of whether the country will be able to avoid major heat and electricity outages has become more pressing than ever. Due to the especially dry weather since the summer of 2007 the level of water in Toktogul reservoir, …
The New Mexico legislature has repeatedly failed to grapple with the problem of who owns deep brackish groundwater, and how its use will be regulated. My colleague Sean Olson has a story in this morning’s Albuquerque Journal that illustrates the mess that has resulted, as folks with development interests elbow one another out of the …
Continue reading ‘Legislative Failings and New Mexico Water Wars’ »
Tony Davis had a story last week on Tucson’s approach to meeting (or not meeting) the water needs of new developments on its perimeter: A city water policy that had been described as “trick-or-treat” for new developers has been replaced by a tougher stance in which City Hall has denied service to four projects in …
A reader familiar with my longstanding interest in how one defines “drought” sent along this interesting story from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Federal Government-selected experts want people to start using the word “dryness” to describe Australia’s worst drought in a century. The word “drought” makes farmers feel bad, says the Government’s hand-picked Drought Policy Review …