Archive of posts filed under the water category.

Time to rethink the Upper Basin’s “Bonus Water” contributions to Lake Mead?

Posted by on

By Eric Kuhn For years, the Colorado River management community has ignored, or at the very least sidestepped, a problem that has effectively sent more Upper Basin water downstream to help fill Lake Mead. But with the reservoir system operating on razor-thin margins, this “bonus water” – seeping through the sandstone cliffs of Glen Canyon, …

Continue reading ‘Time to rethink the Upper Basin’s “Bonus Water” contributions to Lake Mead?’ »

Losing ground(water) in Albuquerque

Posted by on

At the eastern end of Sandia Road NW in Albuquerque is a ratty but important piece of Albuquerque’s water management history – City Well #2. Maintained now by the US Geological Survey, City #2 was installed in the late 1950s, a pivotal time in Albuquerque water management. The community’s population was booming. To meet the …

Continue reading ‘Losing ground(water) in Albuquerque’ »

Carpenter’s Last Stand for Complete State Sovereignty – 100 Years Ago at the Compact Negotiations

Posted by on

By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck On Saturday, April 1st, 1922, at 9:00 AM in Denver’s iconic Brown Palace Hotel, Chairman Herbert Hoover opened the 9th meeting of the Colorado River Commission. The official meeting lasted only 30 minutes. The commission took only one action of consequence. It asked its members to submit to Executive …

Continue reading ‘Carpenter’s Last Stand for Complete State Sovereignty – 100 Years Ago at the Compact Negotiations’ »

Clearing the institutional logjam to allow (some small amount of) NM Rio Grande storage in 2022

Posted by on

Ok, the logjam isn’t cleared yet, but we can see how the clearing will happen. Also, it’s not really Rio Grande storage, it’s the Rio Chama. But it’s a tributary to the Rio Grande. Headline writer’s prerogative. The deal is that El Vado Reservoir on the Chama, where central New Mexico stores its irrigation water, …

Continue reading ‘Clearing the institutional logjam to allow (some small amount of) NM Rio Grande storage in 2022’ »

Brad Udall on the Drying of the Colorado River Basin

Posted by on

The only lever we currently control is the demand lever. – Brad Udall, Stegner Colorado River Symposium, March 18, 2022 Colorado State University climate researcher Brad Udall poked again last week at a question he’s been thinking and speaking about for the past year – the knock-on effects of summer warming in the Colorado River …

Continue reading ‘Brad Udall on the Drying of the Colorado River Basin’ »

Colorado River Compact at 100; Lake Powell at 3,524.42

Posted by on

The most interesting news at this week’s University of Utah Stegner Symposium on the Colorado River Compact, past and future may be the news that we didn’t hear. It was an amazing gathering, bringing together pointy headed academics like me with most of the basin management leadership team from tribes, state and local agencies, and …

Continue reading ‘Colorado River Compact at 100; Lake Powell at 3,524.42’ »

Getting Acquainted with the Colorado River Basin: 100 years ago in compact negotiations

Posted by on

By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck The Colorado Commissions’ 8th Meeting Wednesday, March 15th, 1922, Phoenix, Arizona After a six-week break from the disappointing series of negotiating meetings that ended on January 31st  in Washington, D.C., the commissioners from the seven U.S. Colorado River Basin states and the federal government reconvened for the group’s 8th …

Continue reading ‘Getting Acquainted with the Colorado River Basin: 100 years ago in compact negotiations’ »