Risk of Colorado River shortage declaration rising

Tony Davis reports the Bureau of Reclamation’s latest model runs up the odds of a 2016 Lower Basin shortage declaration to one in three: The odds of a shortage in water deliveries to Arizona and other Lower Colorado River Basin states in 2016 are now 33 percent, up from 21 percent as predicted in January, …

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Yuma’s economy in a single photo

People I talked to on my recent trip to Yuma repeatedly ticked off the three components of the regional economy: ag federal (mostly military) tourism If you count me as “3” on a Gila main canal ditch bank as a squadron of military helicopters flew over, this picture captures them all. I think it’s fair …

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“I’m stuck in my ways.”

It was only when I was captioning and filing my pictures from my recent tours of the old bits of Arizona’s Lower Colorado River water infrastructure that I noticed what the graffiti here said: “I’m stuck in my ways.” It’s a surreal spot – springing from the side of a harsh desert canyon, a remarkable …

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In a Colorado River shortage, Central Arizona will be fine for now

The folks at the Central Arizona Project and Arizona Department of Water Resources held a workshop yesterday to discuss the implications of Colorado River shortage. I didn’t have time to get down there, but Summer Pauli covered the basic message for Cronkite News Service: Arizona’s communities, industries, mines and Native American tribes aren’t likely to …

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1,075: What a Lake Mead “shortage” would mean in practice

update, June 24, 2015: Since this post was written in April 2015, a wet spring has reduced the chance of a “shortage” in 2016. It now appears 2017 is the earliest this could happen. The situation described in rest of the post, detailing what happens when a “shortage” is declared, remains the same. previously tl;dr …

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Water in the desert, Wellton-Mohawk edition

The Wellton-Mohawk Valley is one of those places where you can feel the desert pressing in around you, a ribbon of irrigated green no more than 3 miles wide along the Gila River in southwestern Arizona. The last of the winter vegetables are done, and farmers are getting the ground ready for their spring-summer cover …

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Fallowed ground: 21st century water institutions on Yuma Mesa

This is a field fallowed under a 2013 agreement between Yuma Mesa Irrigation and Drainage District and the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District. The deal is small, but it raises all kinds of fascinating issues of both water management and culture down here in Arizona’s southwestern corner, where water is both economically critical and culturally …

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It’s not all Hoover Dam and giant canals

The Colorado River isn’t very big here, but there’s still enough water in it to drop a pump and irrigate a crop. This is on a weird little geographic island, a chunk of land that is on the west (California) side of the river, but legally in Arizona – left stranded when the Colorado River …

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Habitat conservation on the Lower Colorado

“Collaboration is a much better way of working than litigation.” – Estevan López, Commissioner, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, during today’s festivities marking the tenth anniversary of the Multi-Species Conservation Program on the Lower Colorado River. Jerry Zimmerman, former executive director of the Colorado River Board of California, told a story this morning about how the …

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