Having to rip out your lawn is not the worst thing that can happen

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The bemused Brits at the Economist paid Pat Mulroy a visit:

The main reason why Lake Mead, currently only 40% full, has been getting emptier is a decade-long drought. Whether this is a cyclical and normal event, or an early sign of climate change, is unclear. But even if the drought ends, most scientists think global warming will cause flows on the Colorado River to decrease by 10-30% in the next half century, says Douglas Kenney, the director of a water-policy programme at the University of Colorado Law School.

The consequences seem dire:

Does every middle-class house really need a lawn in a desert? Ms Mulroy has already started paying Las Vegans to rip out their turf and opt for desert landscaping, which can be chic. Her own husband put up a fight but lost. So out went that lawn, too, just as the low-flow toilets and taps came in.

Meanwhile, halfway ’round the globe:

The increased frequency of drought observed in eastern Africa over the last 20 years is likely to continue as long as global temperatures continue to rise, according to new research published in Climate Dynamics.

This poses increased risk to the estimated 17.5 million people in the Greater Horn of Africa who currently face potential food shortages. (emphasis added)

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Dairies and Groundwater

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Struck by the numbers on dairy industry groundwater contamination in New Mexico, I’ve been poking around in the regulatory issues involved. Here’s a bit of what I found (sub/ad req):

Dairies are found throughout New Mexico, but are especially concentrated in the southeastern part of the state, where growth of industrial dairy operations has made it the largest sector of the state’s agricultural economy, according to a study by University of New Mexico law professor Denise Fort.

The state Environment Department says groundwater beneath 57 percent of the state’s 168 current and former dairies is contaminated in excess of safe drinking water standards.

Among other things, the new regulations would require plastic liners at all new or replacement dairy waste ponds. The industry argues that those liners are costly and ineffective.

Attorneys at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center say a Jan. 12 e-mail from dairy lobbyist Walter Bradley to Martinez’s deputy chief of staff Brian Moore suggests that the industry had the inside track as the executive order delaying the regulations was being prepared.

“Our attorneys (for the Dairy Group) Dal Moellenberg and TJ Trujillo of Gallagher & Kennedy drafted some language for the ex. order,” Bradley wrote. In the e-mail, Bradley offered the industry’s legal help in defending the state against a subsequent lawsuit filed by attorneys at the Environmental Law Center.

‘

A Jug of Water?

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The folks at Arizona’s Salt River Project are soliciting ideas from the public for the time capsule they plan to bury as part of Roosevelt Dam’s centennial celebration this spring. “What would you lock away for 50 years and give to the future people of Phoenix?”

My question is how many acre feet you could fit in the time capsule.

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: The Changing Ways New Mexico Manages its Water

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Buckman Diversion

Buckman Diversion, Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal

From this morning’s newspaper, a look at the implications of Santa Fe and Albuquerque shifting from groundwater to surface water imported from the Colorado River Basin (sub/ad req):

For 40 years, San Juan-Chama water has been added to the Rio Grande. You could think of it as “bonus water,” and its loss should in theory not hurt the Rio Grande.

No one disputes the cities’ right to use their imported water, and few question the benefits of the cities’ shift to more sustainable supplies.

But, over those decades, New Mexico has become accustomed to the water’s presence in the river, and water managers are struggling to understand the implications of its loss.

“The river had gotten pretty used to having this extra water,” said Elaine Hebard, a member of the Middle Rio Grande Water Assembly.

Farmers and the environment could feel the pinch.

Did the Imperial Irrigation district give away $246 million worth of water last year?

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This is one of those headline cheats that my journalism friends heap merciless scorn upon, the question lead for which the answer is “no”.

Sometimes thinking through the implications of the doctrine of prior appropriation pretzels my brain. The idea, in short, is that the people who were there first get to use the water, and the people who came next get whats left over, and the people after that get what’s left over after that, lather, rinse, repeat.

But suppose I’m first in line but the people who came later want to make a deal. Can I sell them part of my share, just this one year, when they really, really need it?

But what if I just don’t take my share this year for some other reason? Not because I made the deal with the junior users, but just because, say, the weather was lousy and I left part of my land fallow, or it rained a lot and I didn’t need to divert. Can the junior appropriator just take my unused leftovers without so much as a by-your-leave?

Which brings us to this cryptic William Roller story in the Imperial Valley Press about this year’s underutilization of Colorado River water by the Imperial Irrigation District:

Has the Imperial Irrigation District been giving away its allotment of unused water to the Metropolitan Water District without compensation?

The unused water amounts to 245,966 acre-feet for 2010, according to preliminary figures on the Bureau of Reclamation’s Web page.

Some maintain the water has a value of $1,000 per acre-foot. And that means it could be worth nearly $246 million.

Here’s where the story is frustratingly cryptic. “Some maintain”? Who? What’s their argument? In what forum did they raise it? Whatever, the answer is “no”.

Soft farming prices during 2010 resulted in farmers not growing as much as previously, so there was less agriculture irrigation and less water usage, and for the two prior years also, King said.

“Not only that, but we had five to six inches of rain, when we normally get 2.85 inches,” King said. “And we almost doubled that. So that reflects on usage.”

No water users are compensated for water, King said. Whenever one of the seven party signatories cannot use its allocation of water, by law, the next priority user has rights to the water.

Expensive water

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Over at Columbia University’s “Water Matters”, Debbie Cook has been making the case against desalination as a water supply solution. She has a number of lines of argument, but it all boils down (pardon the pun) to cost, and to a series of societal tradeoffs that flow from that. Consider Saudi Arabia’s decision to use its plentiful energy resources to provide desalinated drinking water:

According to some reports, water rates in Saudi Arabia cover less than half of one percent of the cost of producing desalinated water. Subsidizing water, food, and gasoline is seen as a way of sharing the country?s oil wealth. But the absence of any price signal has led to some of the highest per capita water consumption in the world, and highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Saudi Arabia now ranks 6th in greenhouse gas emissions, half directly attributable to desalination. Authorities are straining under the burden of water and energy demands pushed by burgeoning population growth. Despite allocating $150 billion over the next five years for power and water projects, they have been forced to abandon their goal of becoming self-sufficient in wheat production. With natural gas in short supply, the feedstock to produce electricity will continue to be oil. The irony is that oil revenues make up 90% of the Saudi government?s budget so every barrel diverted to water is a barrel that cannot be sold on the market to fill state coffers.

More of Cook’s desal arguments here and here.

“He called the place Lonely Dell, and it was not a misnomer”

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Lee's Ferry, 1921

Lee's Ferry, 1921, courtesy USBR

Lee’s Ferry is a storyteller’s delight, one of those connect-the-dots places that is simply irresistible. On the Colorado River just downstream from Glen Canyon Dam, it is where John D. Lee was sent into hiding (exile?) following the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where John Wesley Powell split his second Grand Canyon trip in two, where the Colorado River Compact splits upper and lower basin water, where the USGS today measures the great river’s flow.

A delightful gift arrived in the mail yesterday, the two-volume collection of essays from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s centennial symposium in 2002. It’s full of mineable treasure. For today, there’s this wonderful little bit of business. Before the big dams, John D. Lee made little ones:

In addition to constructing lodging, Lee quickly turned his attention to the establishment of a garden patch. One of his first tasks was to complete a dam on the Paria River to impound water for irrigation. Thus began a continual battle to maintain the dam in the face of frequent floods and to keep the crops watered during times of drought.

It’s a battle that, on a larger scale, is in some sense still going on. From Lee’s Ferry, the Colorado River and the Development of the Bureau of Reclamation, by Douglas E. Kupel.

Desal economics – a question

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I don’t know Florida water issues at all, so maybe someone can help me here.

Tampa Bay Water spent $160 million to build a desal plant. But they don’t use it all that much:

Tampa Bay Water says it costs four times as much to turn water from Tampa Bay into drinking water as it does to pump water out of the ground.

“In these economic times, every penny counts,” said Tampa Bay Water Operations Director Chuck Carden. “If we have less expensive sources to use, why wouldn’t we use them?”

So was the plant’s purpose to meet peaks, like a natural gas power plant that’s designed to only run at times of maximum demand? Is there something going on here re the cost of water at the margin in Florida that I don’t get?

Just some lazyweb questions for a Saturday morning.

Connecting some dots

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A couple of (possibly connected?) things that crossed my desk this morning –

According to the latest data from the San Francisco Fed, Las Vegas (Nev.) has huge foreclosure numbers.

And then this good news, from Henry Brean at the Las Vegas Review Journal:

[W]ater use continues to decline in the valley, where the water authority delivered about 3 percent less water in 2010 than it did in 2009.