I’m headed up to Boulder this week for the University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center’s “Navigating the Future of the Colorado River” conference (more from John McChesney here), then off from there to Sacramento and the Bay Area (with the kind support and assistance of Stanford’s Lane Center) to learn more about California’s water …
USGS researcher Mike Dettinger, whose paper on “atmospheric rivers” (ARs) and climate variability in California I highlighted over the weekend, has a new paper in the June Journal of the American Water Resources Association looking at how climate change might influence the phenomenon in the future. AR’s dominate California’s precipitation (and water supply) delivering a …
Continue reading ‘Increased flood risk in California under climate change’ »
Oregon water doc and NRC Bay-Delta panel member today offers Californians some unsolicited advice: Memo to California: Regulate groundwater withdrawals on a statewide basis.
John McChesney has posted a great interview with Pat Mulroy, head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, about future directions for Colorado River management. She’s the most vocal proponent for mechanisms that might allow sharing of shortages among water users across the Colorado River basin, rather than a strict prior appropriation approach where junior users …
Continue reading ‘Mulroy: We don’t need to tear up the compact’ »
Part of my standard schtick when I talk about water management in the arid southwest is an explanation of the problem of variability as it relates to aridity. It is so obvious that it almost goes without saying that life in an arid climate poses climate problems because it’s dry. But the more subtle problem, …
Continue reading ‘California and the Problem of Variability in Water Management’ »
Mark Reisner, in Cadillac Desert, describes Jerry Brown’s struggle back in the late 1970s and early ’80s to sort out the conflicting interests surrounding the Bay-Delta System as plans were developed for what was then known as the Peripheral Canal: Jerry Brown’s dilemma – which was insoluble, but which he thought he could solve anyway …
Here’s one of those societal water value questions that doesn’t get a lot of attention. How cool are massive waterfalls? “Breathtaking, that’s what it is,” said Lynne Bousie of Scotland, who stopped to pose for a photograph at the spot where the paved trail to Yosemite Falls makes a turn and the first full view …
Janet Zimmerman in the Riverside (Calif.) Press Enterprise on what happens to water agencies when their customers use less: Water use has dropped by double digits across Southern California as residents heeded the call to conserve. As a result, water district revenues fell drastically. Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the wholesaler that supplies most …
I’ve triggered some puzzlement among California water folks as I call around trying to understand the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in preparation for my trip out there next month. Why does a New Mexican care? Other than the fact that it’s fascinating, of course. I mean what water wonk wouldn’t be fascinated by California’s water problems. …
Continue reading ‘Why Some NM Schlub Cares About the Sacramento Delta’ »
Jeffrey Mount and Jay Lund (UC Davis water guys) draw lessons for California from Morganza and the lower Mississippi: In the Central Valley, those in the floodplain operate under an old adage: You hope that the other guy’s levee fails first. For political, economic and legal reasons, our institutions have been unable to move beyond …