I got a text message yesterday afternoon about this, which is nuts:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Albuquerque District announced today that an unintended water release from Cochiti Dam may increase flood risk on the Rio Grande in the river channel, riverbanks, and floodway.
The cause of the unintended water release was a procedural error during routine maintenance.
Accidentally dumping 8,000 cubic feet per second into a river channel that hasn’t seen that much water since 1985 is a big deal. The gage data suggests the river level rose four feet basically instantaneously.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the stuff the federal government does in water management in the United States that we used to be able to take for granted, like, for example safely operate the dams.
We all love to complain about the federal government’s water management work, but the complaints are based on narrow questions and presume a broad societal consensus that there’s a bunch of stuff the federal government can be reliably counted on to do while we argue over details. Reclamation and the Corps are gonna operate the dams, for example. The details we argue about are at important margins, but they’re at the margins, based on the presumption that the basic stuff will get done.
Like, for example, spending the money that Congress approved to help us manage shortages in the Colorado River Basin. Which money has now been yanked out from under us by the autocrats who think they know better, as Alex Hager reported yesterday.
HAGER: Colorado River user groups are being told that payments in exchange for their water are on pause for now. It’s unclear if those payments scheduled to arrive in coming months will actually show up.
BART FISHER: It’s unnerving to think that maybe come August 1, all of our plans will need to suddenly change.
HAGER: Water experts say these projects don’t seem to conflict with the Trump administration’s executive orders. Anne Castle helped manage water under presidents Biden and Obama.
ANNE CASTLE: These are not woke environmental programs. These are essential to continued ability to divert water…. Having this appropriated funding suddenly taken away undoes years and years of very careful collaboration among the states in the Colorado River Basin and threatens the sustainability of the entire system.
I have no idea what happened at Cochiti Dam yesterday, whether the person who made the “procedural error” was new because the old timer who knows how to run the dam took the early buyout and bailed. But I do know that is exactly the “what if” scenario I was gonna lay out in a blog post that’s been percolating in my head about this question of how we in the West go forward in water management when the federal government suddenly becomes an unreliable partner.
I am not saying this because complaining about the stunningly arrogant idiots crashing through the federal government right now is great clickbait. I’m tired of all the angry clickbait, frankly, which is why I hadn’t written the blog post until today.
My point here is a serious question, not a rhetorical one: What would it mean for us in Western water management if the federal government becomes an unreliable partner? What must we do to prepare? What does that even look like?
Western Europe is wondering how reliable a partner they have as well.
Speaking for myself, I’m damned glad that Elon Musk wasn’t tasked on this project…
Murphy’s law prevails, “The cause of the unintended water release was a procedural error during routine maintenance.” With a career in commercial aviation now behind me, I reflect on our “Challenge and Reply” method of running through emergency procedure checklists and what we referred to as “abnormals” mitigation, wherein one of the pilots reads the checklist, printer or electronic version, and the other pilot verifies and reports verbally, one-by-one, each switch is in the correct position and the individual line item in the checklist is completed. The foregoing a simplified version. but is applicable none-the-less. Is there an application here for the Challenge and Reply method to be employed in the arena of routine maintenance for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Albuquerque District? Me thinks so, but nobody likes being told what to do.
Nobody knows or can imagine the damage this administration will do before it’s stopped. Just wanted to add to your concern about incompetence. Decades ago I was at a meeting of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program (they couldn’t think of a longer name). In response to a request to modify output from Flaming Gorge Dam, one of the BOR engineers leading the meeting said that it was so important that the spillway works of the dam work when they had to that they could never be used. We looked at each other and thought that if something needs to work when it needs to work, the only way to insure that is TO TEST IT REGULARLY.
On another issue. In the basins in Arizona such as Cochise and La Paz Counties under consideration for groundwater management, it’s closing the barn door after the horses have gone. Nobody in an official position in Arizona will say that. Laissez Faire. Rule of Capture. Laws are not retroactive. It is silliness to talk of 1% or even 10% reduction in pumping.