In the Time of Pandemic, the bottom half of one of my favorite paintings by the artist R.J. Fleck (my late father) has become a feature of my Zoom lectures, and webinars, and now an appearance with John Blackstone on CBS This Morning Saturday. It’s the Grand Canyon, and I said some stuff about the …
Dennis Patch (Colorado River Indian Tribes) and Ted Kowalski (Walton Family Foundation) in the Arizona Republic: Tribal nations have historically been left out of planning and negotiations that develop river management across the Colorado River Basin. Meaningful tribal inclusion going forward will not be an easy task. It requires leadership from all involved to authentically understand …
Continue reading ‘on the importance of tribal participation in Colorado River governance’ »
Eric Kuhn’s been calling this a “sneaky drought”: Another forecast predicting a dry warm spring for the Colorado River basin – The official CRBFC May runoff forecasts will be out next week. Look for a big drop in the A-J unregulated inflow to Lake Powell. https://t.co/5GkozLVHim — Richard Eric Kuhn (@R_EricKuhn) May 1, 2020 …
Continue reading ‘“sneaky drought” in the Colorado River Basin’ »
Between trying to figure out how to work with graduate students I can’t see in person, and starting nervously at our pantry counting cans of beans, it’s been hard to do any of the work that has sustained me these last many years. Thinking, and writing. As the fog settled in back in March, one …
Continue reading ‘Kuhn and Fleck talk about “Science Be Dammed”. May 6, in the cloud.’ »
The pipe that carries Albuquerque’s Colorado River water is not actually all that big!
Jenny Ross has a fascinating new paper suggesting we reconsider the story we all thought we knew about the formation of the Salton Sea: It is widely thought that the Salton Sea was created accidentally in 1905-07 because of engineering negligence in the diversion of Colorado River water for agricultural use in California’s Imperial Valley. …
April 20, 2010, I took a drive that changed my life. Around the back of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Yuma Area Office, helped by a map hand-drawn by Jennifer McCloskey, then the Yuma Area Office manager, I headed up a dirt road onto the levee that borders the eastern edge of the Colorado River …
Continue reading ‘Ten years ago today, a drive down a Yuma levee that changed my life’ »
When I was writing Water is For Fighting Over five years ago, I built a little analytical model of Las Vegas water – projections of per capita demand and population growth, current patterns of water use and banking, risk to Colorado River water supply. At the time, the Southern Nevada Water Authority was aggressively pursuing …
Continue reading ‘Las Vegas abandons proposal to pump rural Nevada groundwater’ »
UNM Water Resources Program student Annalise Porter tipped me off to this, from Audubon’s Jennifer Pitt: At a time when the world feels bleak and uncertain, I want to share a sign of hope: it has been raining, and the Colorado River is flowing in its delta #CORiver ?@RaiseRiver? pic.twitter.com/6W8iRcvm3r — Jennifer Pitt (@JnPitt) …
Continue reading ‘Water flowing in the Colorado River Delta’ »
Jeff Kightlinger, who as head of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California since February 2006 has played a major role in Colorado River governance, announced today that he’ll be retiring at the end of the year.