With Lake Mead ending 2019 at elevation 1090.49 feet above sea level – up 9 feet for the year – it’s worth visiting the Bureau of Reclamation’s classic “structural deficit” slide and seeing how it compares to 2019’s real world data. First, a reminder of where the oft-quoted “1.2 million acre foot structural deficit” comes …
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We ended up with 1.2 million acre feet of water flowing down the Rio Grande past Albuquerque this year, according to my quick and dirty calculations based on the USGS Central Avenue gauge. That would be the biggest flow through town since 1995. That’s 42 percent above the long term mean (this gauge’s data goes …
While Colorado River water management eyes were focused elsewhere this year – on the big snowpack up north, or the chaos success of the Drought Contingency Plan – California has quietly achieved a remarkable milestone. Its use of Colorado River water in 2019 will be 3.858 million acre feet. The last time it was below …
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New Mexico has dithered long enough in its efforts to build a federally funded Gila River diversion, Interior Assistant Secretary Tim Petty said in a letter to state officials today: More from the Silver City Daily Press.
Public radio station KJZZ looks at Science Be Dammed, the new book by Eric Kuhn and John Fleck on the overallocation of the Colorado River.
I could see the reporters at last week’s Colorado River Water Users Association meeting chafing at the rhetoric we were hearing regarding climate change. In my strange new role (kind of a reporter, I am writing another book, and kind of not – I have this crazy university gig) I was invited into the news …
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By Eric Kuhn One of the central themes of last week’s Colorado River Water Users Association annual meeting was the was the role of the basin’s Native American Tribes in the many decisions that will guide and manage water use on the Colorado River over the next several decades (for example, the post-2026 Guidelines). CRWUA …
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Touring Hoover Dam Friday afternoon, a friend deeply embedded in the “Law of the River” asked if I knew that Section One of the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act was carved in stone on one of the Dam’s iconic towers: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of …
As has become my December tradition, I’m in a Las Vegas hotel room preparing for this year’s meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association/finishing up grading my University of New Mexico Water Resources students’ final papers for the just-finished semester. This year’s class – our introductory course for graduate students in our Masters of …