Aztec Motel
In Albuquerque, we frequently tear down our old Route 66 motels, but keep their signs:
Archive of posts filed under the New Mexico category.
Canoeing the Rio Grande pulse flow
This guy paddled past today as I was standing with friends on the bank of the Rio Grande, watching the high flows of this week’s environmental pulse flow through central New Mexico. If you look closely, you can see a bicycle in the front of his canoe. As he rode by, he explained that when …
Rio Grande pulse flow
I had work to do this morning, but this happened and I couldn’t very well not go watch: It’s an environmental pulse flow on the Rio Grande through Albuquerque, creeping down a channel built in 2008 to provide spawning habitat for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow. This is the fourth consecutive very dry year …
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: the National Climate Assessment
From the morning paper: New Mexico’s current drought, with dwindling water supplies and increasing wildfire risk, is a taste of our future under climate change, according to a sweeping new federal report released Tuesday. While climate’s natural ups and downs are playing a major role in our current drought, rising greenhouse gases increase the odds …
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Getting my own little pulse flow
It’s lacking the drama of the March Minute 319 pulse flow on the Colorado River, but I’m getting my own little pulse flow on the Rio Grande here in Albuquerque beginning later this week: Beginning Wednesday, central New Mexico will get its river back – for a week. The anemic Rio Grande, parched by drought, …
JR’s garden
I like my friend JR’s attitude toward gardening in the desert: I water almost nothing here. I do throw yesterday’s left over water from Cooper’s bowl on the autumn sage. It keeps the red blossoms coming and the hummingbirds like that. Some days the birds get the left over water. The New Mexico locust gets …
Irrigation and hope for New Mexico’s future
Teddy Roosevelt, speaking in Santa Fe, NM, May 5, 1903, during his grand western tour: I build no small hope upon the aid that under the wise law of Congress will ultimately be extended to this as to other States and Territories in the way of governmental aid to irrigation. Irrigation is of course to …
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more stuff I wrote elsewhere: NM Env. Dept. dings Air Force over groundwater cleanup (or lack thereof)
Also from this morning’s paper, a tougher stance from the New Mexico Environment Department on progress (or lack thereof) in cleaning up a massive groundwater mess beneath Kirtland Air Force Base and adjacent Albuquerque neighborhoods: The letter provided to the Journal is an expression of increasing Environment Department frustration with the cleanup progress. A month …
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Embudo and the history of measuring water
From this morning’s paper, a visit to Embudo, where stream U.S. stream flow measurement began: In the world of U.S. water management, this narrow strip where the river funnels between high bluffs is historic. Powell, most famous as the first person to survey the Grand Canyon, had realized that the ambitions of the continent’s European …
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stuff I wrote elsewhere: a dry summer on the Rio Grande
Here’s a picture of the Rio Grande, at Embudo, with water: Here’s a newspaper story about the Rio Grande, at Albuquerque, without water: Without good summer rains, the Rio Grande through Albuquerque could see its lowest sustained levels since the 1970s, water managers said Wednesday. In the midst of the fourth consecutive year of extreme …
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