Working today on a piece for the newspaper on Indian water rights, I followed a trail of Google crumbs trying to figure out who was the “Winters” in what’s called “the Winters doctrine”. The doctrine is a pillar of U.S. water law, which grows out of a 1908 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Nuke Costs Rising’ »
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 …
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, …
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.