Something Else I Wrote Elsewhere: Supplementing the River

Also from this morning’s paper, a story documenting Albuquerque’s 60th consecutive day without measurable precipitation. We’ve got an outside chance of breaking the streak this evening, and then again mid-week. But the forecasts are basically bleak. But the real import was tucked in near the end of the story (sub/ad req): Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau …

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Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Moving Water, New Mexico Style

From the Sunday Journal, a look at two proposals to pump and pipe water from rural New Mexico to the state’s rapidly developing Rio Grande corridor (sub/ad req): Ray Pittman pulled his 1994 F-150 pickup to the top of a thinly wooded hill, a short walk from the water tank he built back in 1999 …

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Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Dry Year on the Rio Grande

From Thursday’s newspaper (sub/ad req), a look at what is increasingly looking to be a very dry year on the Rio Grande, which has become entangled in a Byzantine governance issue involving allocation and distribution of Lower Rio Grande water: In recent years, dry conditions have made managing the river more difficult. Eight out of …

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Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: latest on the jet fuel plume

From the morning paper (sub/ad req): Groundwater contamination from a Kirtland Air Force Base jet fuel spill has spread farther than previously believed, according to a report presented to municipal water officials Wednesday. A new test well drilled by the Air Force last year beneath a southeast Albuquerque neighborhood shows evidence of contamination, two blocks …

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Stuff I wrote Elsewhere: A Visit to Work Case 82B

From this morning’s paper, a visit to Work Case 82B (sub/ad req) at the University of New Mexico’s Museum of Southwestern Biology, where they keep that which has gone extinct: The Carolina parakeet on the top shelf of Work Case 82B, green with a dingy red head, looks little different from the other 30,000 stuffed …

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Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Megadroughts

Peter Fawcett has a terrific paper in Nature this week on southwestern megadrought. I’ve been “upstream” (as the science journos like to say) for a while, having been along when Peter and others did some of their very first field work in the Valle Grande in Northern New Mexico back in 2003, and I’ve been …

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