LAS VEGAS – With Commissioner of Reclamation Brenda Burman’s ultimatum to the Colorado River Basin States at the just-completed Colorado River Water Users Association meeting in Las Vegas, it seems we’re going to get a Drought Contingency Plan, or something very much like it, in 2019. This could be very messy, but it suggests that …
Continue reading ‘Beyond the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan’ »
Mead, Elwood. (1903). Irrigation Institutions.
Looking for art for the new book, I ran across the above picture from the amazing Library of Congress collection of Carol Highsmith’s work. Hoover Dam as cultural icon is big and muscular, which is by design and also a function of the fact that it’s hard to get back and see the dam in …
New data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shows that total 2017 water use in the basin – 14.07 million acre feet – was the lowest since 1984. The total here includes estimated consumptive use in the Upper Basin, Lower Basin, Mexico, plus reservoir evaporation and estimated evapotranspiration by native vegetation.
A letter this afternoon from Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke to Central Arizona Project board members, also circulated to Arizona’s Drought Contingency Plan Steering Committee, suggests another hangup in Arizona’s efforts to agree on a plan to reduce its Colorado River water use. It involves the distinction between using water from on-river …
Continue reading ‘Another Arizona Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan sticking point?’ »
The surface level of Lake Mead, which holds water supplies for Nevada, Arizona, California, Sonora, and Baja, ended November 2018 at 1,078.32 feet above sea level. That is 2-1/2 feet below last year at this time.
I’m moderating a panel on the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan at this year’s meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association in Las Vegas (NV) in a couple of weeks. What shall we talk about? Arizona’s water agencies, cities, farmers and tribes haven’t quite sealed a Colorado River deal. But they’re getting closer. The …
Continue reading ‘I think (?) there’s an Arizona Colorado River deal? Episode II’ »
Update: via Ian James from the Arizona Republic, here are the slides for today’s meeting. Previously: With the announcement of a meeting this afternoon of Arizona’s Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan steering committee, it appears we have the general shape of an agreement to settle the thorny issue of how to reduce Arizona’s use of …
Continue reading ‘I think (?) there’s an Arizona Colorado River deal?’ »
Wow. Bruce Babbitt, former Arizona governor and Secretary of the Interior, has a striking op-ed in tomorrow’s Arizona Republic placing the blame for Arizona’s current Colorado River failures squarely on Pinal County farmers and the leadership of the Central Arizona Project. Ultimately the responsibility for approving Arizona’s part of the critical Colorado River Drought Contingency …
Elizabeth Whitman had an incredibly important bit of business in her Phoenix New Times setup piece for today’s Central Arizona Water Conservation District meeting on the Colorado River DCP: “Negotiations in Arizona are at a critical stage,” said Patricia Aaron, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Reclamation. The bureau was “cautiously optimistic,” she added, but, …