Wrecking ball report, snow survey edition

Those Rio Grande runoff forecasts we use to make critical water management decisions on New Mexico’s Rio Grande? NRCS…. From the Western States Water Council: The mass layoff of federal workers, including U.S. Department of Agriculture layoffs, has led to the loss of seven positions at the National Water and Climate Center (NWCC), cutting nearly …

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Taking another crack at Tribal water in Arizona

The three Native American tribes in northeast Arizona – Diné, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute – are taking another run this year at a water rights settlement that would finally bring water to communities that lack it. An attempt last year failed in the final days of the last administration after Upper Colorado River …

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2025 Rio Grande Watch

Early March is usually when I emerge from my wintry water nerd slumber and begin tracking the rise in my beloved hometown river, Albuquerque’s Rio Grande. Yesterday morning the core family unit packed sandwiches and went down to the Rio Bravo Bridge, on Albuquerque’s south side. It’s a favorite spot because of the graffiti – …

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Latest forecast suggests Rio Grande drying through Albuquerque is possible by early June

This week’s newest U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Rio Grande runoff model runs have triggered a string of “wait, what?” conversations this afternoon at the Utton Center. possible drying through Albuquerque as early as June, with a good chance of drying even earlier we may already have passed the spring runoff peak irrigation supplies, already short …

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Reclamation wrecking ball report: “Oh, did you need that thing we just knocked down?”

Via Annie Snyder (maybe behind a paywall?), the new crew in Washington has apparently realized we need those people at Reclamation who know how to operate dams and stuff: The Trump administration is pulling back on staff firings at the federal agency that runs California’s sprawling water system after the cuts threatened undercut President Donald …

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Record low March 1 snowpack in some New Mexico watersheds

The preliminary March 1 runoff forecast from Karl Wetlaufer, the federal government employee at the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service who provides vital information to help us make informed water management decisions, is yikes: February brought another month of well below median precipitation across the entire Rio Grande basin. As one would anticipate this generally …

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“We get to determine what kind of apocalypse we’d like to have.”

“We get to determine what kind of apocalypse we’d like to have.” – Hanif Abdurraqib I’m obsessed with this quote from the poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib in a New Yorker piece last month. He somehow packed doom, hope, and obligation into those twelve words. Abdurraqib is riffing on Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, …

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Wrecking Ball Report: At Reclamation, a view from the inside

Elevated from the comments, observations from former Reclamation manager Doug Blatchford: WHEN I joined the Reclamation team in 2005 as the River Operation Manager on the Colorado River, part of my duties was to prepare a business plan to direct future business decisions based on the operations budget and services required (like delivering water to …

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