My name’s John, and I’m a water law junkie. I can’t get enough of Article III(d) of the Colorado River Compact. I love picking fights over the Upper Basin’s share of Mexico’s 1.5 million acre feet delivery obligation. I don’t care. I’ll argue either side. Just give me my fix. So I’ll happily stipulate that …
Continue reading ‘Brad Udall on the Colorado River and “the reality of the public”’ »
From Juliet McKenna, another example of the lengths to which southwestern municipalities will go to adapt to shrinking water supply: LA’s plan calls for building one of the country’s largest groundwater treatment systems at one of its largest Superfund sites. Groundwater in the San Fernando basin has elevated levels of chromium, perchlorate, nitrates, and trichloroethylene …
Continue reading ‘Before we abandon LA because of water shortages, we’ll do this’ »
In the arid west, increased irrigation efficiency is one of the most commonly suggested solutions to our water problems. But Jay Lund and Thomas Harter point out the dilemma: In many areas, drought-year groundwater supplies depend substantially on irrigation inefficiency in wetter years, when surface water is available and used by farmers. Ironically, local inefficiency …
Smart Jay Lund piece on the shortcomings of old-school environmentalism in the new world: Classical environmentalism is mostly about stopping new harmful human influences, not reversing the harmful effects of past changes or shaping a more environmentally friendly future. Environmentalism has not substantially reversed the widespread urban and agricultural destruction of wetlands or freed rivers …
Continue reading ‘Lund on a call for a new environmentalism’ »
One of my gazillion water book ideas was “The Last Concrete”. It was going to be about the end of big water infrastructure in the West. Except there’s no way to know when the last one happens, because there are a bunch of lingering projects that probably won’t ever get built, but that don’t ever …
The NOAA Automated Atmospheric River Detection system has picked up a storm with some potential in the Pacific, which at this point (five days out) seems to be pointed at California: That’s the forecast image for Monday morning. According to Michael Dettinger, who was fielding my questions this afternoon on Twitter, AR storms are very …
Continue reading ‘A California “atmospheric river” storm, in June?’ »
In an op-ed in today’s Sacramento Bee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, has a lot of ideas for fixing California’s water problems: bigger dams tweaks (unspecified) to the Endangered Species Act a Peripheral Tunnel (do we still call it “Peripheral”?) to ease conveyance of water from north to south of the water Californians will be storing …
Continue reading ‘Dianne Feinstein has a bunch of #cawater ideas’ »
Via Henry Brean, Pat Mulroy shares her views of the Imperial Irrigation District’s efforts to funnel water into the Salton Sea: Mulroy is definitely worried about Lake Mead, which supplies about 90 percent of the Las Vegas Valley’s drinking water. But she also voiced broader concerns about river water being used to prop up a …
Continue reading ‘Pat Mulroy doesn’t think much of the Salton Sea’ »
When I left Pasadena nearly 25 years ago, my water mentor Tim Brick was hard at work on the problem of restoring a semblance of riverness to the Arroyo Seco, the channel that defines that Southern California city’s western edge. Via a visit by our old mutual friend Larry Wilson to the confluence of the …
If men will fight over water, they will also cooperate to conserve it and the history of water controversies is that, in the long run, the rule of cooperation prevails. Yet another nugget from my current favorite book, Carey McWilliams’ California: The Great Exception. Do you think he’s right? (The quote’s the opening of a 1949 …