On Windmills and Domestic Wells

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windmill

Windmill, cc C.K. Hartman

The windmill, using wind to pump water from the ground, is an iconic image of the American west. But the question of the cumulative effect of a bunch of little wells – these days often out behind tract homes powered by electricity rather than the wind – has become one of the central arguments in western water law and policy.

Here in New Mexico, we’ve long recognized in the law the connection between surface and ground water – the idea groundwater pumping eventually creates a great sucking in the surface water supply. But our state court of appeals recently ruled that domestic wells are OK, that regulations essentially exempting them from water rights regimes did not violate our state constitution’s doctrine of prior appropriation.

Montana was late to legally recognize the groundwater-surface water connection, and as Laura Lundquist writes, the domestic well exemption is a huge issue:

It wasn’t until 2006 that Montana acknowledged the connection between surface and groundwater. The state Supreme Court ruled in Montana Trout Unlimited v. DNRC that the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation was wrong to permit new large wells in a river basin where people were already banned from making new surface water claims .

The ruling acknowledged for the first time in Montana that taking water from below the ground is the same as taking it from above.

The ruling applies to closed basins: areas where the state must confirm the total amount of water already claimed before the state Legislature will allow any new claims to be filed. Such is the case in the Bitterroot River basin where no new surface rights are available and getting a groundwater right isn’t impossible but now it is a lot more difficult.

But small domestic wells are exempt from water rights requirements so new small wells are allowed even in closed basins where water is at a premium. Developers take advantage of that.

Didion on Water

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Some of us who live in arid parts of the world think about water with a reverence others might find excessive.

When I was visiting Hoover Dam in October, the folks who were showing me the stilling wells inside the dam took me on a side trip out onto the walkway outside the power plants at the bottom of the dam.

We stood for a long time watching the water boil up into the dam’s tailrace, where the Colorado River renews its trip downstream after its quiet impoundment in Lake Mead and its frenetic trip through the dam’s penstocks and enormous generators.

It was mesmerizing.

I was reminded of that visit today via OTPR’s link to a Joan Didion essay on water:

I can put myself to sleep imagining the water dropping a thousand feet into the turbines at Churchill Falls in Labrador. If the Churchill Falls Project fails to materialize, I fall back on waterworks closer at hand — the tailrace at Hoover on the Colorado, the surge tank in the Tehachapi Mountains that receives California Aqueduct water pumped before — and finally I replay a morning when I was seventeen years old and caught, in a military-surplus life raft, in the construction of the Nimbus Afterbay Dam on the American River near Sacramento. I remember that at the moment it happened I was trying to open a tin of anchovies with capers. I recall the raft spinning into the narrow chute through which the river had been temporarily diverted. I recall being deliriously happy.

Desal’s California Stumbles

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Desalination of seawater along the coasts is the west’s water supply backstop, the reason we won’t in the worst case scenarios abandon southwestern cities. The water is very expensive as compared to the current system of dams, canals, pipes and pumps, but it’s cheaper that bailing out of the region entirely.

So what does this LA Times story about desal’s California troubles suggest?

[D]esalination has been lagging in California, where water woes are especially dire, industry and government officials say. They blame the slow progress on a disorganized local industry, litigious environmentalists and a thorny approvals process.

I would humbly offer a simpler suggestion: that we haven’t reached the pain point yet, at which desal suddenly looks more appealing than increasingly dire alternatives.

River Beat: Weekly Good News Report

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Chris Brooks notes the good news:

Lake Mead is finally beginning to climb.

At this writing, its surface elevation is at 1082.30, after dropping below 1082 during the last week of November. And DG points us to some other good news.

That’s snow pack as of Friday in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Those of us down in New Mexico, dependent on the San Juan and Rio Grande, are sucking wind, as you can see. But much of the basin looks dandy! (And a huge thanks to DG. I’m always looking for good at-a-glance graphics for tracking snow pack. Consider that one bookmarked and shared.)

Lake Powell finished November with 14.9 million acre feet of water, slightly lower (60kaf) than the projection in the most recent 24-month study and 200kaf lower than in the August 24-month study, which is the one used for planning purposes.

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Nuke Costs Rising

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From the morning paper (sub/ad req) a look at the rising  costs (four to seven-fold) and long delays (being generous, nine years) facing a proposed plutonium lab at Los Alamos:

Among the most vocal critics of the agency’s nuclear project management are a cadre of retired nuclear weapons experts.

“This is mismanagement,” said Bob Peurifoy, who retired as a vice president at Sandia National Laboratories in 1991 after 39 years helping in the nuclear weapons complex. Peurifoy had a hand in the development of five of the eight nuclear weapons in the current U.S. arsenal.

“They’ve fallen down the rabbit hole,” Peurifoy said in an interview. “It’s madness. They don’t understand accountability to the taxpayer.”

The story includes a history of other nuclear weapon program projects with a similar history. Here are two:

• National Ignition Facility, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Original estimate: $1.1 billion
Final cost: $3.5 billion
Original estimated completion: 2002
Completion: 2009
• Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrotest Facility, Los Alamos
Original estimate: $30 million
Final cost: more than $300 million
Original estimated completion: 1990
Completion: 2009

La Niña

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Residents of the arid southwestern US like to think we’re the ones who know drought. But drought’s a relative thing – not how dry it is in absolute terms, but in comparison to what you’re used to.

Take New Orleans, for example, which received 2.75 inches in rain in November. Here in Albuquerque, that would be a record-setting November. But in New Orleans, it’s jut half of normal. Albuquerque, meanwhile, had essentially no rain in November. But Louisiana is in drought, while New Mexico isn’t. It’s all relative.

Drought Monitor

Drought Monitor

River Beat: Growing Bathtub Ring

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Lake Mead, October 2010

Lake Mead, October 2010

To Emily Green’s monthly dirge to document as well as accompany the declining levels of Lake Mead, I would add this: Mead’s end-of-October surface elevation, 1081.94 feet above sea level, was 1.31 feet below the level forecast just a month ago.

Recall that 1075 is the trigger level for the first lower basin shortage declaration, and that, with a foot here and a foot there, pretty soon we’re talking about real water.

Modern Technology

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HP 15C

HP 15C

I got a sad note today from a friend who recently lost his beloved HP 15C calculator:

It had worked flawlessly for 28 years.  One set of batteries lasts 7 years or more.  One key was getting a bit worn.  Dropped a few times, of course.

A relic of what the U.S. could once do.

Rings of the Redwoods

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Via Patricia McBroom, a fascinating look at a group studying tree rings in the redwoods along the Northern California coast for clues about climate:

The plan is to chart the health of the trees over time and use laboratory analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes to figure out how the trees have reacted in the past to climate and weather conditions.

“Embedded in this tree ring is a remarkable record of climate,” said Todd Dawson, the director of the Center for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry at UC Berkeley, as he held up a core sample from a Montgomery Woods redwood. “Based on what has happened in the past, we can really project what will happen in the future.”

More on what tree rings can tell us, for that youngster on your holiday shopping list: The Tree Rings’ Tale: Understanding Our Changing Climate