Archive of posts filed under the water category.

Litigation to settle our Colorado River disagreements is a terrible idea

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Preparing for a panel I’ll be moderating at next week’s Colorado River Water Users Association meeting on the next steps in negotiating river management rules, I went back to a similar panel held last summer at the University of Colorado’s Getches-Wilkinson Center. (the session starts at around 3:23:00 here) John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada …

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California’s use of Colorado River water this year on track to be the lowest since at least 1950

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California’s use of Colorado River water this year is on track to be the lowest since at least 1949. (the latest forecast numbers are here) My data on the early years is sketchy, but thanks to the folks at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, who recently shared an excellent dataset they assembled some …

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On New Mexico’s Rio Grande, the biggest year since 1995

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We’re closing out 2019 with big flows on the Rio Grande through Albuquerque – at least big for this time of year. Flow at the Albuquerque gauge Friday topped 2,000 cubic feet per second, setting a record for Nov. 29 at a gauge that goes back to the mid-1960s. A couple hundred of those cubic …

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Kuhn-Fleck webinar Jan. 22 to talk “Science be Dammed”

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Eric and I will be doing a Webinar Jan. 22, sponsored by the American Water Resources Association: In their new book Science Be Dammed, Eric Kuhn and John Fleck explain how even when clear evidence was available that the Colorado River could not sustain ambitious dreaming and planning, river planners and political operatives irresponsibly made …

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Historic New Mexico Instream Flow Right Approved

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Water policy folks in other western states may yawn at this, but in New Mexico it’s a big deal. The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer has approved the state’s first instream flow water right. Here’s a summary from Audubon, the group that put the deal together, explaining how it works. The deal would …

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Building resilience in New Mexico water – Water Dialogue meeting, Jan. 9

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I look forward every year to the annual gathering of the New Mexico Water Dialogue. It’s always a great meeting – the speakers etc. But even more so, it’s a great gathering of our version of “the network” – the diverse collection of folks across cultures and geographies in our state who understand the importance …

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If trends continue, Phoenix is on a path to groundwater “safe yield”, according to new research

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If past trends in greater Phoenix – agricultural land transitioning to urban – the area is on track to groundwater “safe yield”, according to new research by an Arizona State University team: Under (business as usual) conditions where population is expected to increase and agricultural activities to gradually decrease, our results indicate a reduction in …

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Imperial Irrigation District’s line in the Salton Sea sand

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The Imperial Irrigation District board will take up a resolution this afternoon drawing a sharp line. If action isn’t taken to deal with the Salton Sea, the historic early-2000s deal that attempted to untangle California’s Colorado River overallocation (the “Quantification Settlement Agreement” or QSA) “will have been breached”: The full text of the resolution and …

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New paper with Anne Castle on Risk of Colorado River curtailments in Colorado, Upper Basin

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The framing questions I’ve used for my work on water over the last decade go something like this: When the water runs short, who doesn’t get theirs? What does that look like? Those are the motivating questions behind a new paper Anne Castle and I have written. We’ve also added an increasingly important third question: …

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What does it take to win public acceptance of wastewater reuse?

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Q: What does it take to win public acceptance of direct potable reuse of wastewater? A: “a daily lived experience with the effects of drought or water scarcity” That’s one of the key findings from a new paper I coauthored with a team led by the University of New Mexico’s Caroline Scruggs, working with Water …

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