Archive of posts filed under the water category.

The costs of getting California’s Central Valley groundwater house in order

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Groundwater overdraft, especially at the pace and scale now underway in the southern part of California’s Central Valley, has substantial costs – in terms of lost water availability and ground subsidence. But the discussion of those costs often occurs in a vacuum, without a discussion of the very real costs incurred by fixing the problem. …

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The many values of Colorado River Basin irrigated agriculture

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The East Mesa Water Co., in its grant application to the roundtable, says the ditch has a service area of 740 acres. And it says the hay grown on that 740 acres is worth about $500,000 annually, assuming a yield of four tons per acre and a hay price of $170 a ton. The ditch …

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The institutional hydrograph: April on New Mexico’s Rio Grande

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Here’s another example of a New Mexico “hydrograph” – the rise and fall of flow on a river over time – driven by rules, not weather. The drop in river flow happens when the irrigation season begins in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. Here’s J.R. Logan in the Taos News: The Río Grande …

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Resilience and water management on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande

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After a good start this year, New Mexico’s snowpack cratered in February and March. The month just completed, in fact, was the driest March on record in New Mexico. February and March combined were the second warmest and second driest on record, a devastating combination for what had been shaping up to be a decent …

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Are domestic wells hiding Florida water problem?

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On paper, it looks like water use in Gainesville, Florida, is going down. But…. “We are seeing public supply water use decrease over time but population is going up,” Greco said. “So everyone is patting themselves on the back, people like myself, saying, ‘Oh, we are doing such a great job. We are conserving water.’” …

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“Water is for Fighting Over” – on the shelves in September

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My life’s kind of a blur right now, but the official Island Press announcement of my book, along with the unveiling of its cover, is a thing that has just happened, so let me pause and catch my breath. People familiar with my frequent ranting about how Mark Twain never said the thing about whiskey …

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Granite Bay and the California water ethic

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When I read this Phillip Reese story Monday evening about a California community willfully defying the state’s water conservation orders, the name of the place rang a bell. I shot off an email to my friend Cynthia Barnett, author of the wonderful Blue Revolution, a call for a new water ethic in the United States. “Wasn’t …

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Hanak on federal agriculture policies and water

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When we think of federal water policy, we think Bureau of Reclamation or EPA. But just as agriculture is where the water is, federal agriculture agencies are where the money is. Ellen Hanak of the Public Policy Institute of California had a post yesterday with some useful suggestions for spending it well: Practical reforms in …

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Throwback Thursday: Making adobe brick. Bosque Farms, New Mexico

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Arthur Rothstein arrived in the Dust Bowl in April of 1936. He was 21 years old, the son of Jewish immigrants, born and raised in New York City. Fresh from Columbia University, Rothstein had been the first photographer hired by Roy Stryker, his former professor, at the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency that, from …

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