Three interesting visuals for a Friday morning to help illustrate New Mexico’s improving water situation, with caveats. One For this first time since the federal Drought Monitor began operations in January 2000, New Mexico is completely free of drought or unusually dry conditions. Our map is clear: This is excellent news, as Olivier Uyttebrouck noted …
Continue reading ‘Some notes on New Mexico’s improving water situation’ »
As is often my way, I wandered through Albuquerque’s Old Town Plaza at the tail end of my Sunday morning bike ride, stopping in the shade to enjoy the slow pace and people watching of the tourists mixed with Sunday church letting out. On the west side of the plaza are a couple of replica …
Just 5 percent of New Mexico ranked this week as “abnormally dry” in the federal Drought Monitor. That is the least dry the state has been since the monitor began publishing its weekly drought condition reports in January 2000.
The Albuquerque Journal’s Mark Oswald notes a remarkable milestone that passed today: SANTA FE — A water-rights lawsuit that is said to be the nation’s longest-running piece of litigation reached a crucial milestone here Friday, with a judge’s final decree that added only five pages to the thousands upon thousands generated since the proceedings known …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s dysfunctional water rights administration’ »
Forecast flow through the Azotea Tunnel, which provides New Mexico’s San Juan-Chama Project supplies of Colorado River water to Albuquerque and central New Mexico, are forecast to be 152,000 acre feet for the 2016-17 water year, the highest flows of the 21st century.
I’ve got a post up over at Better Burque about downtown crime, buses, Summerfest, and Albuquerque’s public spaces. I quoted Jane Jacobs, as one does:
Rivers, people, awesome in so many ways.
People, this is right in the middle of my town. Right in the middle. This is about half a mile from where I took the last picture, up a new riding and walking trail just north of the old Route 66 bridge right in the middle of Albuquerque. The river’s up this year, it was …
Through much of Albuquerque, the Rio Grande flows between levees at a grade slightly higher than the surrounding valley floor. As a result, storm water must be pumped over the levees into the river’s central channel, with a string of pumping stations and big pipe outfalls like this, on the east side of the river …
Continue reading ‘Flood plain connectivity, Rio Grande style’ »
Riding my bike late this morning, I stopped to admire a roadrunner in the trail. As you can see from the picture, it’s a ratty bit of trail (Gritty? We have more words for the sublime than the mundane.) flanked by the freeway to the north and a treeline to the south bordering old farm …