My friend and University of New Mexico water nerd colleague Bruce Thomson has found some timely reading for us – The Dam, a novel by Robert Byrne. Bruce is on UNM’s engineering faculty and taught our engineering ethics course for many years. Quoting Bruce: It’s a short novel (244 pages) about a young engineer who …
Continue reading ‘“The Dam” by Robert Byrne – an Oroville ro·man à clef?’ »
While we were all distracted by the chaos at Oroville Dam, the snowpack above Lake Powell on the Colorado River last week climbed above normal for the year. By this measure from the CBRFC, it’s at 57 percent above average for mid-February. It doesn’t usually peak until early April. Based on the latest round of …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River Basin snowpack suggests a good runoff year’ »
The mess at Oroville Dam will have lots of dam safety lessons, but they will take time to learn. One important lesson, though, is staring us in the face: Climate change is projected to yield both more extreme flood risks and greater drought risks. That was Mike Dettinger and colleagues, writing last year in San …
Continue reading ‘Wetter wets, drier dries, and the lessons of Oroville Dam’ »
The Otay Water District, in California’s San Diego County, is working on a deal to buy water from a desalination plant in Mexico: Even as California residents debate whether we are free from the drought, local water agencies are looking for ways to increase their water supply. The Otay Water District is working on a …
Continue reading ‘Another US-Mexico transboundary water collaboration’ »
Do not underestimate how important a sewage system is to your humanity; refugees know that their subhuman status as the waste of nations is confirmed by having to live in their own waste. Viet Thanh Nguyen
Rhea Graham, a savvy veteran of western water governance, made an interesting observation about my book over on Goodreads: One of the few thoughtful discussions of the Lower Colorado River international boundary, it unwittingly becomes context for the reset of USA-Mexico relations begun in 2017. I spend a good deal of time in Water is …
Continue reading ‘Some context on the Colorado River and the U.S.-Mexico reset’ »
Runoff this year on the Rio Grande at Otowi in northern New Mexico is forecast to be 50 percent above average, according to preliminary numbers out this morning from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the March-July forecast. There’s always a big spread in the forecast this early in …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s Rio Grande forecast: 50-plus percent above average’ »
A wet January added nearly 3 million acre feet to the Colorado River runoff forecast, with the Feb. 1 forecast update from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center sitting at 9.5 million acre feet for April through July. That is 34 percent above average. The snowpack currently sits at 56 percent above average. The dropoff …