Eilene Zimmerman on efforts in Southern California to do that which seems both obvious but somehow icky: treat our sewage and then reuse it: We don’t have enough water where we need it; if we don’t learn to deal with drinking toilet water, we’re going to be mighty thirsty.
It’s sort of an infrastructure triple junction. Below, you’ve got a big open concrete channel that substitutes for what used to be arroyos carrying water off of what is now a city. Adjacent to it, you’ve got a buried water main, carrying drinking water to the residents of that city. Above it, you have one …
Continue reading ‘Water in the Desert: Main Break Edition’ »
On the current status of our snowpack: Much of New Mexico is just like the forecasters said we should expect it to be: dry. With La Niña’s cool Pacific waters pushing storms away from us this year, Albuquerque and most points to the south and east have been drier than average since Oct. 1. The …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Forecast Edition’ »
Peter Waldman has a story in Portfolio exploring the role of the federal government in general and Harry Reid in particular in the growth of Las Vegas: In a city running out of water, massive housing projects rise in clouds of dust on the outer reaches of the Las Vegas Valley like stucco ramparts built …
Continue reading ‘Water in the Desert: Harry Reid Edition’ »
Years ago, when I had two working knees, I used to enjoy running in local 5k and 10k races. I would often linger at the finish area, hoping against hope that I might win one of those coveted top three age group finish medals. It rarely happened, but if the field was small enough, I …
Continue reading ‘Welcome to One of the ‘Net’s Top 10 Water Blogs’ »
Snowpack may be looking just dandy here in the Southwest for a La Nina winter, but Klaus Wolter’s latest experimental forecast suggests it would be unwise for us to get all cocky about our decisions to buy those full-season ski passes: My experimental forecast guidance for the late winter season (January-March 2008) continues to show …
Beware the quagga mussel.
Lee’s Ferry, on the Colorado Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Sitting at home working on a chilly Saturday, this photo from a trip in 2005 reminds me that I’d rather be at Lee’s Ferry than sitting home writing about it. But it’s a pretty interesting place, so writing about Lee’s Ferry is a good close second. …
From North Carolina, word that residents are not really all that altruistic and require some sort of pricing structure to help them understand that they’re in a frickin’ drought: Less than two months ago, Gov. Mike Easley urged all North Carolina communities to reduce water consumption by 50 percent. After showing marked declines in the …
I recently discovered the USGS’s wonderful photo archive, which (among many other things) has a huge collection of the photography from the second John Wesley Powell survey of the Grand Canyon. Powell quote of the day: Many droughts will occur. Many seasons in a long series will be fruitless.