Archive of posts filed under the water category.

Ban Ki-moon: water should be source of collaboration, not conflict

Posted by on

Water resources ‘a reason for cooperation, not conflict,’ Ban tells Security Council Noting that three quarters of UN Member States share rivers or lake basins with their neighbours, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today highlighted the value of water resources as a reason for cooperation, not conflict. “The need for coordination in water management is …

Continue reading ‘Ban Ki-moon: water should be source of collaboration, not conflict’ »

A return to flood irrigation in search of environmental benefits

Posted by on

I’ve praised the successful shift from flood irrigation toward more efficient technology – meaning things like center-pivot and drip over flood irrigation – that has enabled a downward trend in the amount of water applied to a typical irrigated acre of farmland in the United States. According to the USGS, US farmers decreased their average …

Continue reading ‘A return to flood irrigation in search of environmental benefits’ »

talking water cooperation this morning on Colorado Public Radio

Posted by on

I’ll be on Colorado Public Radio this morning (Mon. 11/21/16) sometime around 10:30 a.m. mountain time, talking about the importance of water conservation and collaboration. CPR’s Rachel Estabrook, who spent some time talking with me last week about my book, did a nice writeup ahead of the interview: To avoid federally mandated cutbacks, Arizona, Nevada …

Continue reading ‘talking water cooperation this morning on Colorado Public Radio’ »

federal dam operations in a Trump administration

Posted by on

A new paper on federal dam operations by my University of New Mexico colleague Reed Benson seems suddenly timely. It’s an exhaustive review of the legal structures surrounding Bureau of Reclamation and Corps of Engineers dam operations, with an eye toward finding a path to more flexibility in response to changing climate, human values, and …

Continue reading ‘federal dam operations in a Trump administration’ »

NAFTA and the Colorado River

Posted by on

With campaign rhetoric suggesting the likelihood of a changing relationship with Mexico, it is worth asking how a Trump administration might influence ongoing binational collaborations on the Colorado River. The important caveat here is that, as one of my friends put it in the days after the election, we chose Door Number Two on Nov. …

Continue reading ‘NAFTA and the Colorado River’ »

Not a lot of good reservoir sites on Mars

Posted by on

For those planning a trip to Mars…. Evidence shows that more than 3 billion years ago Mars was wet and habitable. However, this latest research reaffirms just how dry the environment is today. For life to exist in the areas we investigated, it would need to find pockets far beneath the surface, located away from …

Continue reading ‘Not a lot of good reservoir sites on Mars’ »

The risks of overestimating future water demand

Posted by on

Laura Paskus has a new piece touching on an issue that is one of the most important policy problems in western US water management – the tendency of water managers to overestimate future demand. In this case, it’s the Gila River basin in southwestern New Mexico, where planners are considering significant investment to build a …

Continue reading ‘The risks of overestimating future water demand’ »

Effluent as an environmental good

Posted by on

My University of New Mexico Water Resources Program colleague Bruce Thomson loves to point out that Albuquerque’s wastewater treatment plant is, in New Mexico, the second largest tributary to the Rio Grande after the Rio Chama. But as tributaries go, it’s a short one – under 100 yards/meters from the outfall to the main river …

Continue reading ‘Effluent as an environmental good’ »

We’re already in a Colorado River “shortage”, we just don’t call it that

Posted by on

As Bruce Finley notes in today’s Denver Post, we are on the brink of the first shortage declaration on the Colorado River: The next president could be faced with ordering a first-ever reduction in water siphoned from the river by 333,000 acre feet next August, a report by the Colorado River Future Project contends. That’s …

Continue reading ‘We’re already in a Colorado River “shortage”, we just don’t call it that’ »