We’ll be analyzing lessons from California’s drought for a while yet. But what I view as the most important lesson is already clear. The L.A. Times’ Bettina Boxall, one of the state’s most experienced and respected water reporters, summed it up thus: [O]n the whole, this intricately plumbed state proved to be surprisingly resilient in …
Continue reading ‘California’s remarkable resilience in the face of drought’ »
Ian James on new work by USGS researcher Michelle Sneed on the aquifer beneath the Coachella Valley, west of California’s Salton Sea: Since 2010, she said, groundwater levels have either stabilized or risen in many parts of the valley, in large part due to replenishment of the aquifer at percolation ponds. “Every well I’ve looked …
Continue reading ‘In California, another aquifer turns the corner’ »
This Bee aerial video of the work on the Feather River to try to cope with the problems at Oroville Dam is an amazing illustration of the scale of human intervention in rivers: Click through for the full video, no one screen grab can do it justice. They’ve completely shut down the spillway so they …
Continue reading ‘To fix Oroville, they shut down a river. Then built a road.’ »
The always thoughtful Mike Dettinger: Calling the long term groundwater depletion (overdraft) part of the drought is blaming a thing we've done to ourselves on the weather. https://t.co/bWI6arxSXY — Michael Dettinger (@Mdettinger) February 27, 2017
Talking this week to members of the Colorado River water governance brain trust at the Family Farm Alliance‘s annual gathering in Las Vegas, there was a weird vibe about the big snowpack building in the Rockies. My quick take based on the February USBR modeling plus the latest forecast info from the CBRFC Lake Powell …
This is a big deal: The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which gathers water for 19 million people in the region, expects it can now begin storing water for future years. In recent years, it had been using up its water reserves. It’s just one bit of a thoroughly excellent piece on the state …
Starting to think about what my next book might be, I’ve been reading about the history of citrus agriculture in the Southern California of my birth. My interest, in terms of the book, is the way the evolution of irrigation technology and governance maps onto the working landscape that was, for a time, the richest …
Continue reading ‘Throwback Thursday: the 1885 Riverside Citrus Fair’ »
Hey San Francisco Bay Area friends, I’ll be on your radios tomorrow (Friday 12/30/16) at 9:30 am Pacific time. I’ll explain how to solve all the water problems. Actually, I think thanks to the Internet thing you may be able to listen even if you don’t have a radio and/or are not in the Bay …
Continue reading ‘I’ll be on KQED tomorrow, 9:30 Pacific Time, talking water’ »
One of my new lectures this semester for UNM Water Resources Program students tackled the question of where and how you draw boundaries around a water management problem. The example I worked through was the Colorado River and the U.S.-Mexico border. You have water management institutions and governance that are largely separate on each side …
Continue reading ‘In western water management, the rest of us nervously watch California’ »
LA Times on the eve of the release of the EIS on Sacramento Delta water diversion tunnels: Talks are ongoing over the Colorado River, where drought and increasing demand from Arizona and Nevada may reduce California’s share. If the tunnels are never built, the Met will need to drive a harder bargain on the Colorado to …
Continue reading ‘The Sacramento Delta-Colorado River connection’ »