Black phoebe on the Lower Colorado

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Rockwood Gate

Rockwood Gate, Lower Colorado, February 2012

Samuel Rhoads set out from Yuma to collect specimens from the Lower Colorado for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia on Feb. 4, 1905.

Witmer Stone, who later catalogued and wrote about Rhoads’ collection, said this:

The conditions that prevailed during the expedition were peculiarly unfavorable to collecting of any sort, the rain, cold and high water being almost unprecedented.

History tells us (as delightfully captured in Bill deBuys’ Salt Dreams) the impact of that rainy February, when the Colorado River sliced through irrigation intakes with a vengeance, flooding out of control and creating the Salton Sea.

Among the creatures collected for Philadelphia Academy, Rhoads found the Black phoebes particularly delightful:

“One of the most lively bits of bird life, which relieved the tedium of our boat journey, was the frequent sight of these birds sitting on the floating drift and hawking flies and other insects from the steaming surface of Colorado of a chilly morning.”

They’re still very much there, with a particular fondness for trees and shrubs that overhang the water. They sit still out over the water, their heads snapping back and forth until they spy a bug. Darting out, they have a flycatcher’s maneuverability, with a flared tail for steering. Grab bug, return to perch, repeat. One imagines there were more of them in Rhoads’ day, because there was a lot more water. But where we found water on our trip to the Lower Colorado desert trip, Lissa and I found Black phoebes, almost without exception.

We found them here, for example, along the river at the old Rockwood Gate, one of the now-abandoned structures where grand irrigation schemes a century ago came to naught. The picture captures the modern scene, but not completely. Behind me as I took it, the All-American Canal replaces Rockwood’s failed ventures, carrying most of what remains of the Colorado River on a beeline west and then north to the Imperial Valley. In the foreground, the snowbirds. And across the river in the distance, toward Yuma, the Yuma Desalting Plant.

Desert D’Or

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Palm Springs really does have palms, and springs. Tucked in canyons on the east flank of Mt. San Jacinto, they’re lovely oases in the truest sense. Lissa and I sat for a while this afternoon next to a trickle of a stream, watching squads of western bluebirds work over the tiny dates hanging from the palms. Looked like feast day.

The real palm springs

The real palm springs

We’d largely discarded this place, without meaning to, but realized we can’t. That much was clear as we drove yesterday up through the Pinto Basin in what is now Joshua Tree National Park. By “place” here I mean something big and a bit complicated, but we’ll start by defining it as the deserts of southeastern California. Lissa and I did some of our falling in love here – living in LA and wandering these deserts when we were young and poor and carefree. But that’s only a piece of it, and not the beginning, and certainly not the end. Mom and Dad brought me here from the beginning, camping in one of those big canvas tents. In Boy Scouts – ah, glorious Boy Scouts, where I learned all those unintended lessons – we hiked the desert canyons. When we were old enough to con adults out of car keys (how did we do this?), my friends and I would do the same on our own, freedom defined.

Lissa’s sister Ginnie lived here and died here, a refugee of the city settled into the strange culture that is desert living on society’s fringe. Returning to cope with her death 10 years ago was our last visit, and arguably the most important.

I never lived here, but I learned a lot by visiting.

So we ended up here this late winter, Lissa and I, not realizing we were going on a pilgrimage. We wanted to see the Salton Sea, which never quite figured in either of our family stories (save for an odd childhood fishing trip with my grandfather in his neighbor Ralph Kamansky’s boat). Lissa wanted to show me the Moorten Botanical Garden, where Ginnie had taken her to see cactus. And we figured we might as well go see Joshua Tree while we were here.

Norman Mailer’s “Deer Park” is set in the fictional Desert D’Or, a thinly veiled Palm Springs, all Hollywood decadence plopped down in the desert. This is where the palms spread out from the mountains, fed not by natural springs but, for all practical purposes, by imported Colorado River water. If thrift stores are a useful measure of things, the one we stopped in this afternoon had a busted down old golf cart on display in the front window. I don’t know golf carts, so I don’t know if $1,899.99 is a deal or not. My guess is not.

So here Lissa and I are, part anthropologists picking our way through the modern Desert D’Or trying to fathom that which lies at the intersection of Bob Hope and Dinah Shore drives, part hydrologists (my obsession, trying to understand how the plumbing works), and part desert rats, looking for our past.

Save the pelicans, the Salton Sea was a bit of a disappointment – not quite the ruin porn that makes it such a popular Flickr destination, not quite the monument to water folly I imagined, mostly just a big empty at the end of a very large lettuce patch. Desert D’Or is just weird in a way that is fully entertaining as long as we don’t stay to long.

Joshua Tree is still sublime.

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: on the implications of a low snowpack on the Colorado

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Over at the Lane Center, my latest on the progression of our Colorado River showpack:

In December, I paid a visit to Boulder Harbor on the west shore of Lake Mead to see the results for myself. Boulder Harbor is one of those places where the dropping reservoir is made tangible. Two years ago, its boat ramp was closed, its shrinking harbor abandoned to an epic flock of American coots feasting on the critters left in the muck and an osprey that entertained me with a spectacular dive to pick off a stranded fish. Now, thanks to last year’s big snowpack, the water’s back, and boaters have displaced my osprey and coots.

But things appear to be headed back in the other direction.

What’s Devin Nunes up to?

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There are three interlocking fundamental federal water policy/politics principles that are important to understanding current discussions over California congressman Devin Nunes’ legislation aimed at reshaping the distribution of water flowing through his state’s Central Valley.

First, federal subsidy has long been necessary for the big water projects that make the West as we know it work. Second, the money available for federal subsidy is limited, and there are always other competing demands, especially from other places. That leads to the third principle, which is the longstanding tradition of states settling their differences internally, then approaching Congress united.

Now comes Rep. Devin Nunes, with legislation that passed yesterday out of the House Natural Resources Committee that seems intent on ignoring these principles. McClatchy’s Michael Doyle does a nice job on the bill’s specifics, and I’ll entrust you to his care for those details. I’d like to point you in particular to this bit in Doyle’s story:

Senate rules and traditions give Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Senate’s author of the original San Joaquin River restoration plan, considerable clout in blocking home-state bills. In a joint letter delivered Thursday, Feinstein and Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer reiterated their “strong opposition” to the House bill, which they called “troubling.”

“Unless we’re willing to work with (Feinstein), the measure will never become law,” stressed Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, who voted for the bill even as he complained about a “disappointing” lack of bipartisan collaboration.

Adding to the political impediments, the Brown administration’s top resources officer warned that the overall House bill “wreaks havoc” with ongoing efforts to balance water use.

In other words, this bill is dead. It’s not real. It’s theater. Nunes seems to be intentionally blowing up the necessary preconditions for California to work with the federal government on arranging the necessary water subsidies for his constituents who, frankly, really need subsidized water.

What’s the point of the theater? Devin Nunes is not a stupid guy, so he obviously knows his bill goes nowhere. What’s his end game?

Over at On the Public Record, I suggest one hypothesis – that Nunes is trying to move the “Overton window”, laying out an extreme position that, while untenable, moves the framework of what counts as acceptable over in his direction. OtPR entertains another possibility, taking the legislation on its face as an effort to rewrite California’s internal water distribution hierarchy.

Dunno what’s right here. Other ideas?

“our San Franciscan water the cleanest water in the whole world!”

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Best Pork Bun in Town!

Best Pork Bun in Town!

Just when you thought the clown car that is California water politics was empty, out pops a San Francisco ballot initiative to drain Hetch Hetchy:

The measure, which would be submitted to the San Francisco city attorney next week, would require the city to embark on a process to put itself “on a path toward reforming San Francisco’s 19th century water system … and reversing the damage done to the environment over the last 100 years,” said Mike Marshall, executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy.

The bar for placing a measure on the San Francisco ballot is ridiculously low, 9,500 valid signatures. Marshall figures the campaign would cost $500,000, tops. They already have a bona fide celebrity, who narrates a campaign-style video that opens with a majestic shot of Yosemite.

“How would you feel if someone suggested building a dam in Yosemite Valley, flooding a priceless treasure under a giant lake? Well, that’s exactly what happened to the Hetch Hetchy Valley. …

“This is Harrison Ford inviting you to join in the historic campaign to restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley. Help us return this national treasure to the American people.”

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: not-Twain bait and switch

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From the morning newspaper:

One of the problems I have with the persistence of the not-Twain quote is a long history in the West of not fighting over water. Faced with potential conflicts among states over the rivers they share, for example, we developed a series of “compacts” — essentially treaties governing how to distribute scarce water. To say that water is primarily for fighting over is wrong. In many of the largest conflicts, disagreement over scarcity has led to sometimes tense, often suspicious but ultimately successful cooperation. There’s been fighting along the way, but ultimately the compacts and the state water rights doctrines built around them have created cooperative frameworks for resolving our conflicts over water.