I don’t see how this ends well. Most of the major players – the ones that matter, anyway, by which I mean Arizona, California, and the federal government – appear boxed in by constraints they can’t seem to overcome, while the water in the Colorado River’s big reservoirs is circling the drains. Arizona’s giving up …
Continue reading ‘The Colorado River at the end of water year 2022: a status report’ »
By Eric Kuhn, John Fleck, and Jack Schmidt With most forecasts pointing toward another below-average winter of precipitation in the Rocky Mountains in 2022/2023 and with total basin-wide reservoir storage now less than 20 maf (less than 17 months of supply at the rate water has been consumed in the basin since 2000), it is …
A paragraph from the new book Bob Berrens and I are writing about the Rio Grande and the making of modern Albuquerque: To understand a community – any community – you can start with its water. Collective problem-solving, collective action, lies at the core of community, and our relationship with our water requires us to …
Continue reading ‘Collective Action and the Ribbons of Green’ »
The White House announced today it has appointed Anne Castle as the federal representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission. Anne is former Assistant Secretary of Interior For Water and Science, where she helped steer the federal boat through chaotic Colorado River rapids. She’ll be an important asset now that the rapids seem that much …
Continue reading ‘Castle appointed federal rep on Upper Colorado River Commission’ »
Count me among those in the Colorado River community who was disappointed last month with the lack of Department of Interior action on its threats should the states not come up with a plan to sufficiently reduce their water use. But let’s remember the core issue here: the states of the basin, especially the Lower …
Continue reading ‘A reminder that the federal government does not use Colorado River water’ »
As we watch the quivering uncertainty about the nature of the federal threat on the Colorado river, it is perhaps worth a look at past moments of progress in Colorado River governance, and also past roadblocks. Anne Castle and I ran this stuff down for a paper we published last fall. Some history shows a …
If we have learned anything from the current crisis on the Colorado River, it is that we have to know what we’ll do next if the current thing we’re doing isn’t enough. That’s a bloggy shorthand for a deep argument that Eric Kuhn, Jack Schmidt, and I made in comments we submitted this week in …
Welcome new readers! With the current attention on the Colorado River’s crisis, I’ve had a great many people sign up for my blog feed in recent weeks. I’m so happy to have you join our Inkstain community! But an up front apology may be in order, as this might not be what you expected. I’m …
Strongly worded letter today from John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada Water Authority about the failure to reach a deal on Colorado River cutbacks: More later, I’m supposed to be paying attention to a zoom meeting, but making this as broadly publicly available as possible seemed important. Click the “view document” link to see …
Continue reading ‘Nevada: lack of a deal threatens the future of the Colorado River’ »
By Jack Schmidt, John Fleck, and Eric Kuhn On the eve of the release of the US Bureau of Reclamation’s August Colorado River reservoir forecasts – freighted with meaning this month because of Reclamation’s ultimatum to the states about the need to cut water use – we look back at the last four decades of …
Continue reading ‘How We Got Into This Mess on the Colorado River’ »