When I was wrestling six years ago with a path through what became my book Water Is For Fighting Over, I collected material about what I came to call “the great mistake” – the overallocation of the Colorado River’s water. One of my favorite stories surrounded William Sibert: It is quite probable that the compact …
Continue reading ‘From “The Great Mistake” to “Science Be Dammed”’ »
If we’re not allowed to divert some of this water, then Arizona continues to get it all, and they become wealthier and wealthier as time goes by. That’s Darr Shannon, head of the government entity hoping to build a diversion to take water out of New Mexico’s bits of the Gila River. From a fascinating …
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The decoupling between water use and economic and population growth continues in Albuquerque, where we’ve cut per capita water use by more than half since the mid-1990s: Albuquerque endured a hot, dry summer this year. Temperatures are still above average, and the monsoon season never made a big splash. But that hasn’t stopped the city …
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There was more buzz this week at two big Colorado River Basin events about the idea of a “grand bargain” to deal with coming collisions between water overallocation and the Law of the River. The idea crept into the title of the Water Education Foundation’s 2019 Santa Fe Symposium – “Can We Build a Bridge …
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My UNM Water Resources Program colleague Becky Bixby, on New Mexico public telly explaining our spate of rare (for us in northern NM) algal blooms:
A guest post by Doug Kenney, University of Colorado In recent months, we’ve probably all encountered a dozen or more articles reflecting on the 150-year anniversary of the Colorado River voyage of John Wesley Powell. It’s a story coming from the tail end of an era when map-makers used to be among the most …
Continue reading ‘All I Want is an Accurate Colorado River Map’ »
I’m talking with University of New Mexico Water Resources Program students about the Colorado River this week, and pulling together some readings I had occasion to revisit the opening of The New Book: The boat ramp at Las Vegas Bay, once a shimmering recreation mecca on the shores of Lake Mead, now ends in a …
Continue reading ‘Las Vegas Bay: a path into the story of the Colorado River’ »
To speak of ‘war’ is to invoke images of militaries, violent conflict and destruction on a grand scale. Although we do not deny that water can be a factor – one among many – in some conflicts and mainly at intra-state level, we question why this drift towards water ‘securitisation’ at this time? To align …
The Denver Post’s Bruce Finley took a deep dive in today’s paper into the idea of a Colorado River “grand bargain” that might trade off the Lower Basin’s right to make a “call” on the river if flows at Lee’s Ferry drop against an Upper Basin cap on future development: The grand bargain concept arose …
Continue reading ‘More talk of a Colorado River climate change “grand bargain”’ »
After Friday’s blog post and some intemperate tweeting about whether the Colorado River Drought Contingency plan cuts about to go into effect were voluntary or mandatory, a friend involved in the negotiations explained that they actually came up with a word for this: “vandatory”. The idea was that everything they all agreed to in DCP …