Writing in 2018 in the Seattle Journal of Environmental Law, Kait Schilling argued that the doctrine of prior appropriation – the notion that those who first put water to use hold priority over those who came later – was no longer compatible with a climate-changed world. Climate change is diminishing water rights equally regardless of …
An exchange on Twitter about the definition of “dead pool” sent me back to Jack Schmidt et al’s extremely useful (and now extremely relevant) 2016 analysis of what would be required to empty Lake Powell and move all the water down to Lake Mead. It’s the thing that disabused me of my simplistic notion that …
A review of Calendar year 2022 on the Colorado River Colorado River reservoir storage dropped 3.1 million acre feet this year, but there is a proposal now being circulated among the Basin States to cut use by that much to bring the system into balance. Total Storage Total year end storage in Lake Mead, Lake …
Continue reading ‘Dead Pool Diaries: Colorado River 2022 Year in Review’ »
I came away from a week in Las Vegas more hopeful about a deal to prevent a Colorado River crash than I have felt since the ominous day last March when Lake Powell dropped below elevation 3,525. The annual meeting of the Colorado Water Users Association is a bit like the shadow puppets of Java …
Continue reading ‘At CRWUA, inklings of a Colorado River compromise’ »
LAKE MEAD – The Park Service has cut a raggedy new dirt road (“4×4 recommended”) north of Hemenway Harbor along Lake Mead’s receding shoreline so you can still get in to go fishing and do the beach thing. Mead was at elevation 1,043 and change as I rode it on my bike yesterday afternoon, with …
Continue reading ‘If elevation 3,490 is Lake Powell’s new “dead pool”’ »
Thanks to a helpful wizard here at the Utton Center, we’ve now got all the Eric Kuhn/John Fleck Colorado River Compact Centennial posts gathered in a single spot.
The Bureau of Reclamation folks haven’t posted the slides yet from last week’s Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement briefings. In the meantime, some of us in the Colorado River nerd world have been passing around our screenshotted copies like some sort of precious mimeographed ’60s ‘zine. It was a remarkable affair. Buried in the tables and …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck After signing the Colorado River Compact on Friday, Nov. 24, 1922, the commissioners and their advisors returned to their home states. The compact would not become effective until it had been ratified by the legislatures of each of the states and the United States Congress. It was now time …
Continue reading ‘A century ago in Colorado River Compact negotiations: Heading Home’ »
By John Fleck and Eric Kuhn As the Colorado River Compact’s negotiators trekked home in the final week of November 1922 following the completion of their task, the rhetoric soared. Newspapers across the basin published the text of the Compact in full, and the leaders of the negotiation effort fanned out to praise the effort …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck The final day of the Colorado River Compact negotiations seemed almost anticlimactic. Wordsmithing “unperfected rights”? Unable to reach a final agreement on Article VIII on Thursday evening, the Commission met again on Friday morning, Nov. 24, 1922, at 10 AM. They began with a discussion of “unperfected rights.” The …
Continue reading ‘A century ago in Colorado River Compact negotiations: the Compact is signed’ »