sewage and refugees
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
Archive of posts filed under the water category.
Verde Water Treatment Plant
Some context on the Colorado River and the U.S.-Mexico reset
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 …
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New Mexico’s Rio Grande forecast: 50-plus percent above average
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 …
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soil moisture and the new forecast for an above-average year on the Colorado River
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 …
Churchill on brevity
I’m increasing the emphasis on communication in the University of New Mexico Water Resources Program core curriculum. I want our graduates to not only do solid technical water management work, but to develop the tools to communicate it to the people who need it. With that in mind, I’m giving them this as one of …
On water quality, New York pursues big experiment
In a 1932 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court famously opined that… a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. From that line comes the idea that the U.S. states can function as “laboratories of democracy”. …
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Excellent Colorado River snowpack
At this critical time of year for Colorado River snowpack, things are looking very good. For the first time this year, the April-July runoff forecast has climbed above 10 million acre feet. The snowpack among the sites above Lake Powell where the federal government maintains real-time monitoring equipment is 57 percent above the long term …
Jewell announces bridge to completion of Colorado River deals
update: here’s a link to the full text of the Secretarial order Page 1 of Jan. 18, 2017 Colorado River Interior Secretarial Order Contributed to DocumentCloud by John Fleck of Beyond the Water Wars • View document or read text The Obama administration’s senior western water leadership this afternoon announced a Colorado River water management …
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California’s finally wet enough that the Metropolitan Water District of So Cal could store this year
This is a big deal: The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which gathers water for 19 million people in the region, expects it can now begin storing water for future years. In recent years, it had been using up its water reserves. It’s just one bit of a thoroughly excellent piece on the state …