By Jack Schmidt | December 3, 2024 Drawdown of the Colorado River’s reservoirs now slightly exceeds the amount of gain that occurred during the 2024 snowmelt season. For the next four months until snowmelt begins again, the basin’s reservoirs will be drawing from the excess accumulated in 2023, demonstrating the immense challenge in balancing water …
My colleagues with the Colorado River Research Group have a new policy brief out today taking another whack at the question of “assigned water” – water kinda sorta conserved, but left in storage so water agencies can pull it out again at some future date. Think “Intentionally Created Surplus” (ICS). At this point, nearly 40 …
Continue reading ‘Does our current approach to Colorado River accounting hide a looming problem?’ »
As near as I can tell from a lazy visit to the Wayback Machine, it was sometime around 2014 that I added the old Metropolitan Water District Colorado River Aqueduct map to my blog header. It’s a lovely map that has served me well these many years, but it doesn’t match my brand any more. …
Continue reading ‘A minor blog redesign, which is a metaphor’ »
Clouds and mountains were dancing this morning. I think they’re in love.
There’s an alley off Albuquerque’s Central Avenue, old Route 66, between the Southwest Capital Bank and St. John’s Thrift Store. You can’t go down the alley on Google Street View. Google Street View mostly doesn’t go down alleys. Alleys mostly don’t have names. You have to go there for yourself. Down past the “Drug Free …
Last’s night’s DJ John Show in the HF living room traced the history of Mas Que Nada, the ‘60s pop hit by Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66. Its roots in my pantheon of beloved music stem from its moment – KFI, the mid-1960s pop radio that ran as the background soundtrack of my childhood home. …
Continue reading ‘Sergio Mendes and the Consumer Surplus of Music Streaming’ »
I put up a slide for my University of New Mexico water resources graduate students during class yesterday afternoon with two pictures – the emerging canyons at the upper end of Lake Powell, and a smallmouth bass. When Lake Powell gets low, we get a) the remarkable emergence of Cataract Canyon, and b) warm water …
Continue reading ‘Tools for better environmental adaptation as we manage the Colorado River’ »
Public opinion has always favored the free use of water. Brackett, Dexter. “Consumption and Waste of Water.” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 34, no. 2 (1895): 185-203. In 1848, the designers of Boston’s water works assumed a need of 28 gallons per capita per day (GPCD). By 1872, while searching for and …
Continue reading ‘Consumption and Waste of Water, circa 1895’ »
Eric Kuhn, Rin Tara, John Fleck The pending Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement settles Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe claims to the Upper Colorado River Basin in Arizona. To do so, Arizona’s 50,000 AF entitlement of Upper Colorado River Basin water will be allocated. Although Arizona’s testimony during …
If each citizen did not learn, in proportion as he individually becomes more feeble and consequently more incapable of preserving his freedom single-handed, to combine with his fellow citizens for the purpose of defending it, it is clear that tyranny would unavoidably increase together with equality. Alexis de Tocqueville, “Of the Use Which the Americans …