With Lake Mead ending 2019 at elevation 1090.49 feet above sea level – up 9 feet for the year – it’s worth visiting the Bureau of Reclamation’s classic “structural deficit” slide and seeing how it compares to 2019’s real world data. First, a reminder of where the oft-quoted “1.2 million acre foot structural deficit” comes …
Continue reading ‘How big was Lake Mead’s “structural deficit” in 2019?’ »
While Colorado River water management eyes were focused elsewhere this year – on the big snowpack up north, or the chaos success of the Drought Contingency Plan – California has quietly achieved a remarkable milestone. Its use of Colorado River water in 2019 will be 3.858 million acre feet. The last time it was below …
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The first bird I formally identified, as in “sat down with the book and then wrote down the result” was a great blue heron. The entry in the old family Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds, red ball point pen: 11/86 Sat on tiny island in Colorado River all morning, picking at its feathers The …
Public radio station KJZZ looks at Science Be Dammed, the new book by Eric Kuhn and John Fleck on the overallocation of the Colorado River.
I could see the reporters at last week’s Colorado River Water Users Association meeting chafing at the rhetoric we were hearing regarding climate change. In my strange new role (kind of a reporter, I am writing another book, and kind of not – I have this crazy university gig) I was invited into the news …
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By Eric Kuhn One of the central themes of last week’s Colorado River Water Users Association annual meeting was the was the role of the basin’s Native American Tribes in the many decisions that will guide and manage water use on the Colorado River over the next several decades (for example, the post-2026 Guidelines). CRWUA …
Continue reading ‘Tribal Water and the Colorado River: thoughts on the recent CRWUA meeting’ »
Touring Hoover Dam Friday afternoon, a friend deeply embedded in the “Law of the River” asked if I knew that Section One of the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act was carved in stone on one of the Dam’s iconic towers: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of …
Preparing for a panel I’ll be moderating at next week’s Colorado River Water Users Association meeting on the next steps in negotiating river management rules, I went back to a similar panel held last summer at the University of Colorado’s Getches-Wilkinson Center. (the session starts at around 3:23:00 here) John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada …
Continue reading ‘Litigation to settle our Colorado River disagreements is a terrible idea’ »
California’s use of Colorado River water this year is on track to be the lowest since at least 1949. (the latest forecast numbers are here) My data on the early years is sketchy, but thanks to the folks at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, who recently shared an excellent dataset they assembled some …
Eric and I will be doing a Webinar Jan. 22, sponsored by the American Water Resources Association: In their new book Science Be Dammed, Eric Kuhn and John Fleck explain how even when clear evidence was available that the Colorado River could not sustain ambitious dreaming and planning, river planners and political operatives irresponsibly made …
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