Out for an early walk this morning to the Rio Grande, we found a river settling nicely back into its main channel after a couple of months during which we allowed it to play a bit. Since April, the river’s been up and out of the 600-foot wide channel dug for it in the late …
We’ve been having a great year on the Rio Grande through Albuquerque, with overbanking flows to delight the river nerds and mosquitos alike. But this is about to change. Beginning next week (June 26, 2023), the Army Corps of Engineers will begin dropping flows out of Cochiti Reservoir, the main stem dam upstream of town. …
Continue reading ‘After a high-flow spring, Albuquerque’s Rio Grande is about to drop in a hurry’ »
Jack Schmidt, Charles Yackulic, and Eric Kuhn have published an invaluable new overview of how we got into this mess on the Colorado River, and some of the things we need to think about to get out of it. Schmidt, John C., Charles B. Yackulic, and Eric Kuhn. “The Colorado River water crisis: Its origin …
Continue reading ‘Schmidt et al: How we got here on the Colorado River Overview’ »
Given that we’re about to spend a billion dollars to fallow land to reduce water use in the Colorado River Basin, it’s reasonable to ask how we can be sure we know how much water is actually being saved. The answer, according to new work by Katharine Wright and colleagues at Arizona State University, may …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: Paying to fallow may not save as much water as we think’ »
That boat is totally fixable. – Inkstain reader Greg This raises a fascinating legal question: whose boat is it? 43 U.S. Code § 2101 The Congress finds that— (a) States have the responsibility for management of a broad range of living and nonliving resources in State waters and submerged lands; and (b) included in the …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: The Law of Shipwrecks’ »
Over the past year, the question of how to account for evaporation and system losses in the Lower Colorado River Basin has become a hot political and policy topic. With the recent Lower Basin water use reduction scheme, we seem to have set the question aside for now. But it’s not going away. My Science …
Lake Mead ended May 2023 at elevation 1,054.28 feet above sea level. That’s up five feet in a month, at a time of year when the reservoir is usually dropping, so I guess yay? It’s also up 6 1/2 feet from last year, so I guess yay? But also worth noting: Mead is down 32 …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: June 1 Colorado River system status report’ »
I’ve had long conversations this week with smart friends grudgingly supporting of the Lower Basin deal to reduce Colorado River water use over the next few years. Their case for it is simple. Yes, it’s an awful deal in so many ways, but it does have the potential to generate some short term water use …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: The Case for a Shitty Deal’ »
This feels like a shakedown. Nice river basin ya’ got there. Would be shame if somethin’ happened to it. For decades, Lower Colorado River water users have been taking more water than the river can provide, threatening their own communities’ futures. Unable to come up with a plan to live within their water means, they’re …
Continue reading ‘Deadpool Diaries: “Nice river basin ya’ got there….”’ »
My search for Albuquerque’s “Most Urban Irrigation Ditch” took us yesterday to the Stotts Lateral in the North Valley. The Stotts is about a half mile long, carrying water under the railroad tracks from the Alameda Lateral to the Alameda Drain. The east half is underground. The west half, tiny and concrete-lined, is an urban …
Continue reading ‘The Stotts Lateral: new candidate for “Albuquerque’s Most Urban Ditch”’ »