When I was writing Water is For Fighting Over five years ago, I built a little analytical model of Las Vegas water – projections of per capita demand and population growth, current patterns of water use and banking, risk to Colorado River water supply. At the time, the Southern Nevada Water Authority was aggressively pursuing …
Continue reading ‘Las Vegas abandons proposal to pump rural Nevada groundwater’ »
In the time of pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about small rural community water systems. This is in part because of work one of our University of New Mexico graduate students was doing in the Time Before, which seems super relevant now. Tucker Colvin just defended his thesis in UNM’s Geography and Environmental Studies …
I was talking last week with one of my collaborators about the challenge of working. All the things that so fully occupied my time and brain seem so inconsequential right now. I envy friends filling the quiet with productive work. Me? I ride my bike. In the Time Before (was it just two months ago?) …
UNM Water Resources Program student Annalise Porter tipped me off to this, from Audubon’s Jennifer Pitt: At a time when the world feels bleak and uncertain, I want to share a sign of hope: it has been raining, and the Colorado River is flowing in its delta #CORiver ?@RaiseRiver? pic.twitter.com/6W8iRcvm3r — Jennifer Pitt (@JnPitt) …
Continue reading ‘Water flowing in the Colorado River Delta’ »
From the comments, DG elaborates on the task of stream gaging And I can see our intrepid hydrotech out on a walkway at the ‘gage’ (thanks for that), laptop in hand. He’s cabled up to a Data Logger dumping the collected data that had accumulated since his last visit to the site some 4 to …
Continue reading ‘Stream gaging in the time of pandemic, Episode II’ »
For the duration of the pandemic, I will spell it “gage” in honor of the fearless stream gager still out measuring.
Jeff Kightlinger, who as head of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California since February 2006 has played a major role in Colorado River governance, announced today that he’ll be retiring at the end of the year.
By Eric Kuhn The Colorado River’s natural flows are shrinking by 9% per degree C (1.8 F) of warming as climate change continues to sap the river’s flow, according to an important new study by Chris Milly and Krista Dunne of the US Geological Survey. Milly and Dunne also conclude that increasing precipitation is unlikely …
Continue reading ‘How Dry was 2000-2018 on the Colorado Compared to “Normal”?’ »
By Eric Kuhn As the states of the Upper Colorado River Basin work through how to build a “demand management” account in their reservoirs to protect against shortages, water from retiring coal plants could play a crucial role. With few alternatives for use of the water, simply banking it in Upper Basin reservoirs is an …
Jian Wang and David E. Rosenberg at Utah State have put together an incredibly helpful compilation of past projections of Upper Colorado River Basin consumptive use, as compared to what then actually happened: When averaged over the long term, each scenario of future consumptive use over-estimated the observed consumptive use. Herein lies the space for …
Continue reading ‘We keep projecting that water use will go up. We keep mostly being wrong.’ »