From the morning paper, a report on the April Rio Grande runoff forecast plunging off a cliff: Gary Esslinger’s chosen profession, delivering irrigation water to southern New Mexico farmers, looks like some sort of cruel joke these days. The latest punch line came this week in the form the federal government’s April Rio Grande runoff …
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From this morning’s newspaper, my story about the New Mexico state engineer’s decision to deny a proposal to pump rural groundwater from rural western New Mexico to the Rio Grande Valley: By failing to be specific about where the water was going, the project’s backers failed to meet the requirements of state law, Verhines ruled. …
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My whole “what’s all the fuss? we can cope with far less water than we’re now using” agenda is on display in this screed in the morning newspaper about the implications of Albuquerque’s drop from 252 gallons per person per day a decade-and-a-half ago to 150 today: There are, I think, two key messages to …
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I had a story in the morning paper on Albuquerque’s success in reducing per capita water consumption below 150 gallons per person per day, a 40 percent drop from 1994, when our odyssey from water profligacy began. Here’s the bit I slipped in that shows the regional importance: Albuquerque’s reduced usage is a demonstration that, …
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From the morning paper, the story of Lake Arthur, the pond in the middle of Estancia, a rural New Mexico town that won’t give up on its public water: The natural flow in the spring feeding Lake Arthur stopped long ago, said 51-year-old Daniel Chavez, Estancia public works director and proud native son. By the …
As a journalist, I learned early to pay attention to the budget. It’s where we take all our policy ideas, goals and plans and make them real. Which makes tomorrow my journalistically favorite day of the year – the day the President’s annual budget proposal starts the process of deciding how our nation’s government will …
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Over at the day job, a piece on the National Nuclear Security Administration’s policy of refusing to make public the performance evaluations of the contractors that do the agency’s work: Because it seems unlikely a glowing performance report could be used against a contractor, the agency seems to have decided that protecting the contractors from …
My search for folks working the solution space alights on the growing enthusiasm in New Mexico for wastewater reuse: In other states, especially water-short Arizona and Southern California, cleaning up sewage and reusing it in new and creative ways is becoming common. And in less obvious ways, by returning sewage effluent to New Mexico’s rivers, …
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From the morning paper, the US Bureau of Reclamation has taken a big step toward construction of the Navajo-Gallup Pipeline, which is a big deal around these parts: Jason John, head of the [Navajo] nation’s Water Management Branch, called the request for bids on the pipeline “a huge milestone” in bringing water supplies to the …
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Elephant Butte Dam was one of the first big concrete dam’s in America. It currently doesn’t have much water behind it. My column: An enthusiastic crowd wandered the top of Elephant Butte Dam on Jan. 7, celebrating, with good reason, the structure’s role in New Mexico history. But it must have been hard to ignore …
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