The Bureau of Reclamation’s monthly storage model runs, based on the latest Colorado River Basin runoff forecasts, show Lake Powell ending the water year (Sept. 30) at 13.8 million acre feet. That’s an increase of more than a million feet over the May estimate, and 2.8 million acre feet above the Sept. 30, 2018 number: …
TAOS JUNCTION BRIDGE – I took back roads upon back roads this weekend to get home from Boulder, where a bunch of us had gathered for three very socially and intellectually intense days talking Colorado River stuff. I ended up on one of those “what happens if I turn here?” digressions, off US 285 onto …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck With the Colorado River’s “Drought Contingency Plans” now completed, basin water managers are turning to the question of what happens next. That question, as we see it, is: Is there a chance at a “grand bargain” that addresses the unresolved questions head on? Or can the problems continue to …
Continue reading ‘Is there a “Grand Bargain” to be had in the Colorado River Basin?’ »
The 2018 Lower Basin accounting report is out, and if you’re interested in understanding what’s happening on the Colorado River, it’s a gold mine. Did you know, for example, that California’s annual Colorado River water use is down 21 percent from its peak in 2002? Or that the Gila Monster Farms on the Arizona side …
Continue reading ‘Final Lower Colorado River accounting for 2018’ »
From a fun Q & A I did recently with Tara Lohan at The Revelator: One of the biggest difficulties is figuring out who gets to participate — who’s in the room when these deals are negotiated. And it’s just not at all clear what the process is going to look like for renegotiating guidelines. …
Continue reading ‘In the next round of Colorado River negotiations, who will be at the table?’ »
A guest post by historian Sara Porterfield: “May 24, 1869—The good people of Green River City turn out to see us start. We raise our little flag, push the boats from shore, and the swift current carries us down.” Today marks the 150th anniversary of John Wesley Powell’s 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado …
Continue reading ‘John Wesley Powell at 150: How Can We Tell Better Stories?’ »
Correction appended, I was off by 5kaf on the Nevada numbers, also fixed a badly garbled sentence, thanks to the alert reader who brought this to my attention With the backdrop of Hoover Dam, an assembly of Colorado River dignitaries signed the Drought Contingency plan yesterday afternoon. Done really is done. The Colorado River Drought …
Continue reading ‘What the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan means in practice’ »
If you’re following flows on the Rio Grande through New Mexico this spring, no doubt you noticed the big drop this morning in releases from El Vado Reservoir on the Rio Chama. (Of course you noticed, right?) Welcome to what we in the UNM Water Resources Program have come to call “the institutional hydrograph”. It …
Continue reading ‘The Institutional Hydrograh: Article VII of the Rio Grande Compact’ »
“My research integrates elements of biology, hydrology, and geomorphology,” said Hobbs, who is currently working on her Masters’ in Water Resources in UNM’s Water Resources Program. “In New Mexico, the water is more spoken for than it is present. The use of water must be allocated amongst multiple users while also trying to maintain a …
Continue reading ‘Mo Hobbs on the interdisciplinary nature of water’ »
When you cross a bridge, Craig Childs said at an American Rivers gathering in Santa Fe Friday evening, stop, and look down. A couple of llamas stared in what I imagine was puzzlement this morning as I dropped my bike and walked out onto the planks bridging one of the irrigation ditches in Albuquerque’s South …