I had the great good fortune some years ago, when on one of my “learning about water” escapades, this one a visit to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, to have been introduced to Phil Isenberg. Phil – former mayor of Sacramento, and member of the California legislature – devoted much of his life to the pursuit …
A guest post by Jack Schmidt of the Utah State University Future of the Colorado River Project. By Jack Schmidt The end of September marked the end of Water Year 2023 (WY2023). This is a good time to take stock of the year’s runoff and to understand how much reservoir storage improved. What kind of …
Continue reading ‘Water Year 2023 in Context: A Cautionary Tale’ »
I got up early today, threw a camera and a bike in the car, and headed down to the Rio Grande. There’s a spot south of downtown I discovered last month where, when the river’s low, you can get out on the sand flats and look up to see downtown, rising above the river bed. …
I emerged this morning from a month (Six weeks? Two months? I’ve lost track of time.) of writing about the crucial period from 1918-ish to 1931-ish in Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande. The period right now takes up four chapters of Ribbons of Green, the book Bob Berrens and I are writing, which is …
Editor’s note: Today (Oct. 11, 2023) is the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact. The following is an excerpt from Revisiting the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact on its Diamond Anniversary, a forthcoming analysis by Eric Kuhn and John Fleck, co-authors of the book Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring …
Continue reading ‘The Upper Colorado River Basin Compact at 75’ »
Today’s bike ride was a milestone. Riding out to a neighborhood called Ventana Ranch in Albuquerque’s far northwest corner completed the last “tile” (think bingo squares) in my map of the city’s urbanized area. In this case the tiles are a bit more than a mile on a side (“Zoom Level 14” for the map …
Apologies for the pixelated image. I just had the phone, not a camera, and the great blue heron flew before I could get close enough to get a good shot. I got to the river just as the sun crested the Sandias this morning, and the light was gorgeous. I’m giving a kinda important talk …
Continue reading ‘Thinking about the Rio Grande, remembering history’ »
I’ve emerged from my cozy book writing cave (The new book’s going well, thanks for asking!) to some stunningly optimistic Lower Colorado River Basin water use data. Forecast use in 2023 (based on the Sept. 18 USBR forecast model) has dropped below 6 million acre feet, currently just 79 percent of the total baseline …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: Lower Basin use on track to be lowest in nearly four decades’ »
There’s so much going on in this picture. The buildings on the horizon, downtown Albuquerque, are a couple of miles away – foreshortened by the camera’s zoom. It’s a modest downtown, which grew up in that spot 140 years ago because the real estate entrepreneurs collaborating with the newly arrived Athchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe …
Continue reading ‘Watching Albuquerque’s Rio Grande go dry’ »
I spent a couple of days last week out of Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado, touring forest restoration work in the headwaters of the San Juan-Chama Project, which produces critical water supplies for central New Mexico. In others words, water for my neighhbors and me. We’ve learned over and over in the last couple of …