Central to my “decoupling” argument is the premise that, in addition to the water conservation we’ve already seen, we have significant opportunities to conserve yet more. This from Dave Cogdill (California Building Industry Association and an adviser to the Public Policy Institute of California) puts some numbers to the thing: New homes are quite water efficient, …
Continue reading ‘Municipal water conservation – lots more room to move’ »
The last month of my life has been remarkable. My book, Water is for Fighting Over: and Other Myths about Water in the West, emerged into the world, and people noticed it and they’ve been talking about it and I could not be more happy. Nick Stockton interviewed me for Wired, Brad Plumer did a Q & …
When the folks at Island Press asked a bunch of their authors to offer up advice to the incoming president, whoever that might be (“If you were advisor to the president, what would your top priority be and why?“), I tried to keep in mind a fundamental principle that guides my work – the art …
I am looking forward to the Middle Rio Grande Water Assembly’s annual gathering Oct. 22 in Albuquerque.
While I was writing my book about the future of Colorado River water management, I joked about my efforts to leave the Salton Sea out of the story. It was only sort of a joke. The problems of the Salton Sea, an inland water body fed by agricultural drainage from the Imperial Valley, are an …
I miss y’all! So busy being person-selling-a-book while simultaneously being person-teaching-grad-students-about-water. I have much to say, frustrated that I don’t have enough time to write about it all here, but Steve Goldstein at KJZZ helped me share some of my ideas with Phoenix radio listeners. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can listen in …
Water use numbers released by the City of Charlottetown this week contained good news for people worried the city has been using too much. New numbers show the city used 6.13 billion litres of water in 2015, the lowest amount since 1998. Via CBCNews. Charlottetown is on Prince Edward Island.
The language here is so delicate, which is in itself an interesting issue: It is now possible to imagine a future in which highly treated wastewater will be plumbed directly into California homes as a new drinking water supply. That’s Matt Weiser on California’s next big step in institutionally normalizing “direct potable reuse” – the treatment of …
Fascinating new paper by Lewis Davis at Union College (gated) arguing that the need for collaboration in early agricultural societies with highly variable rainfall led to the development of cultural norms of not fighting over water: The link between rainfall variation and individual responsibility draws on an extensive theoretical and empirical literature on risk sharing among …
Continue reading ‘rainfall variability is for not fighting over’ »
Putting together a lecture for University of New Mexico Water Resources Program students tomorrow, I’ve been thinking about this quote from MWD’s Bill Hasencamp, in last week’s LA Times: “Basically, what the models say is that, in the future, most years will be shortage years,” said Bill Hasencamp, the manager of Colorado River resources for …
Continue reading ‘When do we stop calling what’s happening on the Colorado River “shortage”?’ »