Best line about water management I ever wrote: Wet years have a way of covering up a multitude of water management sins. Drought exposes them for all to see. It also helps to expose those sins, apparently, if you have satellites. Here’s Jay Famiglietti, talking about what the GRACE satellites show about groundwater depletion in …
Continue reading ‘When there’s a drought, you pump groundwater, until you can’t’ »
I do not understand this. Not being rhetorical or coy. I really do not understand this. I’ve observed before that Yuma and Imperial counties, the two farm regions that have benefitted from enormous allocations of Colorado River water and the support of the federal government that goes with it, have some of the highest unemployment …
Continue reading ‘Puzzling over water and agricultural economics’ »
California, listen to me. (Grabs home state firmly by the shoulders, stares into California’s face intensely.) You can do this. It’s going to be OK. I know, I know. “Zero” sounds bad. But you go into a drought with the water supply and water system you have, not the one you might want or wish …
Continue reading ‘Breathe, California. Keep it together. You can do this.’ »
When New Mexico was being entertained to newspaper and television coverage last year of water trucks rolling to the handful of communities that, in the midst of drought, had run out, I did a piece in the paper trying to get my arms around the folks he hadn’t run out of water. What were they …
Continue reading ‘In a drought, who runs out of water, and who pays?’ »
As California grapples with drought, it’s a good time to revisit Milly et al.’s 2008 Science paper Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management? I’m not statistician enough to answer the question posed by the post’s title, but it’s at least worth considering, as part of the state’s policy responses to this drought on multiple time scales (both …
Continue reading ‘Has California’s probability density function changed?’ »
California’s remarkable, looming drought conditions are a test, and via OtPR we’re seeing some clues as to who will pass: Southern California prepared for this and has a sufficient buffer that it doesn’t need to ration this year. And how did Southern California prepare? In part by being audacious enough and rich enough, but also …
The tension between scientists and journalists goes back a long time: The vaporings and idle imaginings of the newspaper man, I am compelled to believe, are more acceptable both to landlords and tourists, than any presentation of actual facts. That’s University of California Professor C.B. Bradley, writing in Overland Monthly & Out West Magazine in …
At a water conference here in Albuquerque last week, one of my water mentors Bill Hume (former editorial page editor at the newspaper, later water advisor to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson) made this observation (this is from Bill’s written text, which he kindly shared after the talk and gave permission to me to use): …
Here is an item I ran across this evening while reading old California newspapers. It appeared in the Daily Evening Bulletin of San Francisco,Tues. Feb. 15, 1876: Last week, at Jacinto, a Chinaman got his left arm broken between the wrist and elbow. He came to Chico for assistance and called upon the China butcher, …
In Southern California, the link between weather and water has been inextricably broken. Here’s Bettina Boxall on why L.A.’s driest year, ever, doesn’t matter all that much: Although this year’s No. 1 ranking makes for an interesting conversation piece, it has little practical effect. As anyone driving around Los Angeles can see, lawns are still …