Welcome new readers! With the current attention on the Colorado River’s crisis, I’ve had a great many people sign up for my blog feed in recent weeks. I’m so happy to have you join our Inkstain community! But an up front apology may be in order, as this might not be what you expected. I’m …
Strongly worded letter today from John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada Water Authority about the failure to reach a deal on Colorado River cutbacks: More later, I’m supposed to be paying attention to a zoom meeting, but making this as broadly publicly available as possible seemed important. Click the “view document” link to see …
Continue reading ‘Nevada: lack of a deal threatens the future of the Colorado River’ »
By Jack Schmidt, John Fleck, and Eric Kuhn On the eve of the release of the US Bureau of Reclamation’s August Colorado River reservoir forecasts – freighted with meaning this month because of Reclamation’s ultimatum to the states about the need to cut water use – we look back at the last four decades of …
Continue reading ‘How We Got Into This Mess on the Colorado River’ »
Janet Wilson had a helpful story yesterday in the Desert Sun about California’s negotiations over its piece of the looming Colorado River cutbacks. Its bottom line is that California – the state with the largest Colorado River allocation – is talking about kicking in 500,000 acre feet of water. Or maybe it’s really just 400,000 …
In a July 22 letter, the leaders of 14 Colorado River Basin Tribal governments complained to the U.S. Department of Interior about being left out – again – of the current negotiations around short terms Colorado River cutbacks: View note Click through to see the full letter.
Sadly for most of you, this story is behind Politico/E&E paywall.
By John Fleck, Eric Kuhn, and Jack Schmidt As stakeholders negotiate the current crisis on the Colorado River, we believe the representatives of the states of the Upper Basin – our states – are making a dangerous argument. Their premise is simple. With deep cutbacks needed, the Upper Basin states argue that their part of …
Continue reading ‘Does the Upper Colorado River Basin Routinely Take Shortages in Dry Years?’ »
Colorado has no plans to make additional cuts to water use next year to meet the Bureau of Reclamation’s demand to conserve millions of acre-feet of water, a step needed to preserve power production in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Instead, Colorado officials insist that other states should do the cutting. “I think that at …
When Eric and I converge on a meeting, there’s always the “Are you gonna bring a bike?” conversation. This week it’s the Getches-Wilkinson Center’s Annual Colorado River conference, and the bike ride was a loop around Denver Water’s Dillon Reservoir, on the Blue River. It’s nearly full. The creeks feeding it were running. There was …
Continue reading ‘With Eric Kuhn’s help, I found a (nearly) full Colorado River Basin reservoir!’ »
I’ll let Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlin Touton explain this: In the Colorado River Basin more conservation and demand management are needed in addition to the actions already underway. Between 2 and 4 million acre feet of additional conservation is needed just to protect critical elevations in 2023. (emphasis added) That’s what Commissioner Touton …