From the morning paper, a look at the U.S. government’s filing in the case of Texas v. New Mexico (and Colorado*) over water-sharing (or lack thereof) on the Rio Grande: In a brief filed Thursday, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli alleged that excess groundwater pumping in New Mexico is intercepting water in the shallow aquifer …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: “an insatiable greed for water”’ »
I watched the superstructure of this go up from the levee path a hundred yards or so to the west. Had no idea. Imagined all manner of strangeness.
I live in Albuquerque, as does my wife, my sister and my daughter. At dinner recently, we realized that none of us watched “Breaking Bad”, which is a television program filmed in Albuquerque starring people who would be famous to us if we watched said television program. This leaves us all left out of some …
OK, this was just fun: Absent a really giant floating rubber ducky, the Rail Runner bridge across Albuquerque’s main flood control channel appears to be safe. “The thing about water that people don’t understand is that it is so powerful,” said Adrienne Martinez as she stood over water rushing beneath a scale model of the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: the giant rubber duck risk’ »
From the morning paper: The last time New Mexico was (by at least one measure) this dry, Billy the Kid was shooting up the state and pueblo crops in the Rio Grande Valley were wilting. The “one measure” in this case is consecutive dry years on the Rio Grande: From 1873 to 1883, the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: New Mexico drought, Billy the Kid edition’ »
One of my favorite Albuquerque views is from the bike trail by what we call the “Big I”, the interchange of two interstates in the middle of town. The trail runs along the northwest bank of a flood control channel, and the geography is such that you’re at the highest point around, including (mostly) the …
Given the tension from Texas’s legal complaints against New Mexico regarding the impact of New Mexico groundwater pumping on Texas Rio Grande supply (see Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado), this El Paso Water Utilities pump house feels to some like a middle finger raised in New Mexico’s direction. It’s just inside the Texas border, …
From the morning paper, Norm Gaume’s critique of a proposal to divert water from the Gila: New Mexico is overestimating the amount of water available from a proposed Gila River diversion and underestimating the cost and technical difficulty of the project, according to the former head of the state agency involved. The project, as currently …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: a critique of the Gila diversion’ »
Danger. Journalist doing math. There be dragons: Otowi is the Rio Grande’s gateway to central New Mexico. Located between Santa Fe and Los Alamos, it’s the point where the river has picked up pretty much all the snowmelt it’s going to get, absent some minor contributions from the Jemez Mountains. It’s also a key point …
From this morning’s newspaper, we appear to be headed toward Endangered Species Act litigation this year on the Rio Grande: Human water diversions have left the Rio Grande ecosystem with too little water to maintain the minnow and other species that depend on the river’s flow, including the valley’s iconic cottonwoods, said Jen Pelz, Wild …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: headed toward ESA litigation on the Rio Grande’ »