Ocean to Ocean
Hunting through my photo archives for a reporter doing a piece on the new Eric Kuhn-John Fleck book, I found this old favorite – Yuma, one of my favorite places on the Colorado River.
Archive of posts filed under the Colorado River category.
If trends continue, Phoenix is on a path to groundwater “safe yield”, according to new research
If past trends in greater Phoenix – agricultural land transitioning to urban – the area is on track to groundwater “safe yield”, according to new research by an Arizona State University team: Under (business as usual) conditions where population is expected to increase and agricultural activities to gradually decrease, our results indicate a reduction in …
Imperial Irrigation District’s line in the Salton Sea sand
The Imperial Irrigation District board will take up a resolution this afternoon drawing a sharp line. If action isn’t taken to deal with the Salton Sea, the historic early-2000s deal that attempted to untangle California’s Colorado River overallocation (the “Quantification Settlement Agreement” or QSA) “will have been breached”: The full text of the resolution and …
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New paper with Anne Castle on Risk of Colorado River curtailments in Colorado, Upper Basin
The framing questions I’ve used for my work on water over the last decade go something like this: When the water runs short, who doesn’t get theirs? What does that look like? Those are the motivating questions behind a new paper Anne Castle and I have written. We’ve also added an increasingly important third question: …
Screamin’ deal on that other book I wrote
My friends at Island Press (an amazing outfit, so grateful to have had the chance to work with them) are offering all their titles, including Water is For Fighting Over, for 50 percent off right now. You of course already have your copy, but it’s a perfect holiday gift for that water nerd on your …
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How much might Utah’s Lake Powell pipeline cost?
My Colorado River policy attention time is a finite resource, and I admit I’ve not paid terribly close attention to Utah’s Lake Powell Pipeline proposal. My reasoning has been that it’s likely so expensive relative to the water it would provide that, with the end of big federal subsidies, Utah’s eventually going to wake up …
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A book arrived at my house yesterday by post
My early review copy arrived yesterday, ahead of the “official” Nov. 26 publication of the new Eric Kuhn-John Fleck book Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado. River. I’ve got but one – I talked to Eric this morning up in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, (in the Upper Basin) and he’s got a …
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Metropolitan Southern California’s use of Colorado River water on track to be the lowest this year since the 1950s
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s deliveries of Colorado River water this year are currently forecast at 550,518 acre feet, and depending on conditions over the two-and-a-half months of the year could drop as low as 506,000 acre feet, according to forecast data from the Bureau of Reclamation and what folks at MWD told …
From “The Great Mistake” to “Science Be Dammed”
When I was wrestling six years ago with a path through what became my book Water Is For Fighting Over, I collected material about what I came to call “the great mistake” – the overallocation of the Colorado River’s water. One of my favorite stories surrounded William Sibert: It is quite probable that the compact …
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More Colorado River “grand bargain” buzz
There was more buzz this week at two big Colorado River Basin events about the idea of a “grand bargain” to deal with coming collisions between water overallocation and the Law of the River. The idea crept into the title of the Water Education Foundation’s 2019 Santa Fe Symposium – “Can We Build a Bridge …
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