Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
Notes on a water meeting
Archive of posts filed under the water category.
Climate Change and Colorado Water
Based on all the reporting I’ve been doing for the Albuquerque Journal, it seems to me that you could easily substitute “New Mexico” for “Colorado” in this story: The issue is critical in Western states such as Colorado, where even in wet years almost every river already is “over-appropriated,” with insufficient water to satisfy demand. …
Not Melting So Much After All?
I’ve written at some length (and with some enthusiasm) about Phil Mote’s work on declining western snowpack. Here’s an interesting counterpoint: We conclude that only about one third of the gages exhibit significant trends with time but over half of the gages tested show significant relationships with discharge. Therefore, runoff timing is more significantly correlated …
Water in the Desert
My colleague Sean Olson illustrates in this morning’s paper his grasp of the connection between water and growth: A request for water and sewer service for Westland DevCo’s southwest Albuquerque development was approved by the water board this week, even though it met heavy resistance from two city councilors. Michael Cadigan and Isaac Benton on …
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
On California drought.
Water in the Desert: Thorny Devil Edition
While we’re busy building pipelines to northern Nevada and figuring out how to desalinate brackish groundwater, a desert lizard called the “thorny devil” has opted for a simpler approach, according to a news piece in Science by Greg Miller: They discovered that the hinges contain tubelike channels about the width of one or two human …
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Drought: The Supply and Demand Question
The latest drought monitor notes the current state of our reservoirs here in the western U.S.: Despite the summer showers, many Western reservoirs remained unusually low, signaling ongoing hydrological drought. At the end of July, reservoir storage stood at 82 percent of average for this time of year in Arizona. Storage ranged from roughly two-thirds …
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Water in the Desert: Cocoposts Edition
Mike Campana seems to be channeling Coco in this post about Las Vegas: It may be time to tie land use planning directly to water planning. The subject is Las Vegas, which is running out of water. Or, more accurately, is running into more people. There’s plenty of water for fewer people. The subject is …
Water in the Desert
John_Sadie Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Lissa and I took Sadie for a walk this morning to the ponds out in the bosque beyond Tingley Beach. They were finished in 2005, and are really starting to grow up. Baby cottonwoods line the edge, with cattails growing like bonkers at the southern end. We saw what we …
Not Quite So Great
Jim Belshaw sends along a Felicity Barranger story on the dwindling of the Great Lakes. Per usual, climate change is blamed, though other hypotheses are also on the table: Although the drop in levels in all three lakes is variously ascribed to climate change or new rainfall patterns, evidence is growing that people caused some …