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 …
We’re starting to see dimly the outlines of what it means for the federal government to no longer be a reliable partner in western water management. Here’s Annie Snider and Camille Von Kaenel on what’s happening in California’s Reclamation operations: DOGE’s cuts are already hurting Reclamation’s ability to move water through a sprawling system of …
Continue reading ‘Wrecking ball report, California water edition’ »
Update: Data here is from USDA, the “USGS” in the graphs is a typo in the code I used to generate them, which I’m too lazy to fix. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2024 estimate of alfalfa acreage in New Mexico, 130,000 acres, is the lowest it’s been since the 1950s. Acreage is down 55 …
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 …
This feels like a shakedown. Nice river basin ya’ got there. Would be shame if somethin’ happened to it. For decades, Lower Colorado River water users have been taking more water than the river can provide, threatening their own communities’ futures. Unable to come up with a plan to live within their water means, they’re …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: “Nice river basin ya’ got there….”’ »
It is easy to forget that California’s Tulare Lake, in the southern San Joaquin Valley, once competed with Lake Cahuilla (the “Salton Sea”) for the title of “largest lake west of the Mississippi”. We drained it. We farm it. But as Erica Gies happily reminds us at every opportunity, water is a formidable adversary if …
With a solid snowpack in all of my rivers, we’ve got a pair of solid March 1 forecasts for 2023 runoff. Rio Grande 102 percent at Otowi, the main forecast point for water entering New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley. Implications: While we don’t have a formal Annual Operating Plan for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County …
Brad Udall gave a talk in 2013 that became foundational to my thinking about solving the challenge of life with a shrinking Colorado River. Here’s how I described it in my book Water is For Fighting Over: Udall distinguished between the “reality of the public” and the “reality of the water community,” describing a world …
Helpful piece by Luke Runyon on steps toward accounting for Lower Colorado River evaporation and riparian system losses. During a September Colorado River symposium held in Santa Fe, both Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland and Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told attendees that the issue of evaporation and transit loss in the Lower …
Continue reading ‘Accounting for Colorado River evaporation’ »
Cleaning out some old files this morning, I ran across this great quote from Pat Mulroy some years back from a talk about the problems of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Via’s Maven’s Notebook: We are very, very good at saying no. We are very, very good at blocking. Anybody can stop anything. What we can’t …
Continue reading ‘The tragedy of the anticommons – we’re good at saying “no”’ »