Getting ready for an interview this morning with Mark Brodie at KJZZ (waving at my Phoenix friends!) I put together a table to make it easier to compare the six-state proposal submitted Monday to reduce Lower Colorado River Basin water use, and the California proposal submitted yesterday (Tues. 1/31/23). Perhaps worth sharing here? “Elevation” is …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: The numbers in the states’ two proposals’ »
While we eagerly await whatever it is that might happen this week as the Colorado River basin states struggle to come up with a short term plan to use less water, the Bureau of Reclamation is inviting y’all to a webinar this afternoon (Monday Jan. 30 2023, details here) to begin thinking about a long …
As we get spun up for the second time in six months about a capricious notion of a “deadline” to fix the Colorado River, I’m reminded of the tagline from my favorite teenage superhero comic, Marvel’s Howard the Duck: Trapped in a world he never made. Once again, we are trapped in a narrative driven …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: Trapped, again, in a world we never made’ »
Jeff Lukas: Update of the forecasted Powell inflows chart. Past 2+ weeks has been very good for the Upper Basin.Jan 1st @nwscbrfc forecast called for 105% of average inflows.Jan 17th forecast: 125% of average.Long way to go, but really low #ColoradoRiver flows are off the table. pic.twitter.com/v5og1LGuRY — Jeff Lukas (@LukasClimate) January 18, 2023
Writing in 2018 in the Seattle Journal of Environmental Law, Kait Schilling argued that the doctrine of prior appropriation – the notion that those who first put water to use hold priority over those who came later – was no longer compatible with a climate-changed world. Climate change is diminishing water rights equally regardless of …
An exchange on Twitter about the definition of “dead pool” sent me back to Jack Schmidt et al’s extremely useful (and now extremely relevant) 2016 analysis of what would be required to empty Lake Powell and move all the water down to Lake Mead. It’s the thing that disabused me of my simplistic notion that …
A review of Calendar year 2022 on the Colorado River Colorado River reservoir storage dropped 3.1 million acre feet this year, but there is a proposal now being circulated among the Basin States to cut use by that much to bring the system into balance. Total Storage Total year end storage in Lake Mead, Lake …
Continue reading ‘Dead Pool Diaries: Colorado River 2022 Year in Review’ »
I came away from a week in Las Vegas more hopeful about a deal to prevent a Colorado River crash than I have felt since the ominous day last March when Lake Powell dropped below elevation 3,525. The annual meeting of the Colorado Water Users Association is a bit like the shadow puppets of Java …
Continue reading ‘At CRWUA, inklings of a Colorado River compromise’ »
LAKE MEAD – The Park Service has cut a raggedy new dirt road (“4×4 recommended”) north of Hemenway Harbor along Lake Mead’s receding shoreline so you can still get in to go fishing and do the beach thing. Mead was at elevation 1,043 and change as I rode it on my bike yesterday afternoon, with …
Continue reading ‘If elevation 3,490 is Lake Powell’s new “dead pool”’ »
Thanks to a helpful wizard here at the Utton Center, we’ve now got all the Eric Kuhn/John Fleck Colorado River Compact Centennial posts gathered in a single spot.