I put up a slide for my University of New Mexico water resources graduate students during class yesterday afternoon with two pictures – the emerging canyons at the upper end of Lake Powell, and a smallmouth bass. When Lake Powell gets low, we get a) the remarkable emergence of Cataract Canyon, and b) warm water …
Continue reading ‘Tools for better environmental adaptation as we manage the Colorado River’ »
Eric Kuhn, Rin Tara, John Fleck The pending Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement settles Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe claims to the Upper Colorado River Basin in Arizona. To do so, Arizona’s 50,000 AF entitlement of Upper Colorado River Basin water will be allocated. Although Arizona’s testimony during …
This version of the Colorado River graph, courtesy of Jack Schmidt, more clearly illustrates the narrative of the talk I’m giving later this week: Early 20th century pluvial, when we built the institutions Mid-century baseline, when we built all the dams and farms and cities Millennium drought, when we emptied the reservoirs
Putting together a slide deck for a talk next week, borrowing Brad Udall’s trick of a horizontal line for visualizing the mean during different time periods.
By Jack Schmidt Unfortunately, water use between now and next April is on track to exceed the inflows of the snowmelt season, resulting in a net loss of reservoir storage. The persistent decrease in runoff is severely challenging the quest to rebuild reservoir storage. Summary Reservoir storage in the Colorado River basin is now …
Continue reading ‘Reservoir Drawdown in 2024: Are We on Track to Recover Storage?’ »
A federal judge this week criticized the federal government for failing to consider the risk of a Colorado River Compact call in its environmental review of the planning for Denver Water’s expansion of Gross Reservoir in Boulder County. Wrangling over the risk of a compact call – which the judge said could force water use …
Continue reading ‘Federal Judge Cites Upper Colorado River Basin’s Compact Call Risk’ »
The Arizona Department of Water Resources has published a thoughtful and also delightfully testy response to Enduring Solutions on the Colorado River, the white paper Kathryn Sorensen et al. (I’m one of the et alias) published in August. First a reminder of our core premise: As we work to reduce water use on the post-2026 …
Two years ago, when the level of Lake Mead was hovering near elevation 1,040, my artist wife Lissa Heineman and I drove out over UNM’s fall break to see it for ourselves. Out beyond the old Boulder Harbor, we walked a half mile across mud flats to get to the water. I could look out …
By Jack Schmidt The decrease in reservoir storage following the 2024 inflow season has been thankfully modest, but not as favorable as it was at this time last year. Perseverance reducing consumptive uses and losses is needed for reliability and security in the water supply and to regain reservoir storage. Between mid-April and early July …
Continue reading ‘The 2024-2025 Season of Water Consumption: Can We Retain Our Gains?’ »
Taming the Lower Basin Structural Deficit The federally funded water use reductions approved last month by the Imperial Irrigation District and the federal government have made their way into the Bureau of Reclamation’s annual forecast model (updated Sept. 6 as I’m writing this), and the numbers are remarkable. Imperial’s projected 2.2 million acre foot take …