Archive of posts filed under the New Mexico category.
The risks of overestimating future water demand
Laura Paskus has a new piece touching on an issue that is one of the most important policy problems in western US water management – the tendency of water managers to overestimate future demand. In this case, it’s the Gila River basin in southwestern New Mexico, where planners are considering significant investment to build a …
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Effluent as an environmental good
My University of New Mexico Water Resources Program colleague Bruce Thomson loves to point out that Albuquerque’s wastewater treatment plant is, in New Mexico, the second largest tributary to the Rio Grande after the Rio Chama. But as tributaries go, it’s a short one – under 100 yards/meters from the outfall to the main river …
In Indian Country, where pickle buckets count as water infrastructure
Kirk Yazzie, his wife and three children, ages 2 to 9, live in a one-room house in Thoreau that uses a solar-powered water pump that draws water from a cistern to a tap inside their home.Before the demonstration project started two months ago, Yazzie said he hauled water from St. Bonaventure’s well across town. “I …
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Elephant Butte Reservoir and climate change
Elephant Butte, one of the first big dams built by the then-Reclamation Service (now Bureau of Reclamation), is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. As the graph above shows, its reservoir ended the 2016 water year Sept. 30 at less than 7 percent full. The reservoir’s ups and downs through history show the great variability …
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Greenhouse gases and southwest “megadrought”
Scientists have dubbed decades-long periods of aridity in southwestern North America “megadroughts“. We’ve had them in the past, and research has long pointed toward an increasing risk of them as the climate warms. New research published last week by Cornell’s Toby Ault and colleagues has generated a wave of scary headlines – A Mega-Drought Is Coming to …
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Turning off a river for winter
After a great day-and-a-half gathering of the New Mexico water nerds in Silver City (the 61st annual New Mexico Water Conference, put on by New Mexico State University’s Water Resources Research Institute, I took a leisurely drive this afternoon along one of my favorite stretches of the Rio Grande. The Hatch Valley (more formally known as …
Hey New Mexico water people, let’s gather Oct. 22
I am looking forward to the Middle Rio Grande Water Assembly’s annual gathering Oct. 22 in Albuquerque.
Collaboration on New Mexico’s Rio Grande
A new environmental water sharing governance experiment is underway this late summer on the Rio Grande in central New Mexico in an effort to keep stretches of the river wet for ecosystem benefits. Ollie Reed sketched out the details in this morning’s Albuquerque Journal: Sandia, Isleta, Santa Ana and Cochiti pueblos each donated 100 acre-feet …
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Good at helping communities conserve water? Albuquerque would like to chat….
The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority is looking to hire a new Water Conservation Program Manager. Pass the word, we’re already pretty good at conservation here (I brag about this a lot!) but we’re not letting up. More info can be found at the water authority’s hiring web site. Click on “open positions” in …
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