tl;dr – We’ve got a bunch of really interesting interdisciplinary work underway at the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program. If you know someone finishing their undergraduate work or early in their career, interested in water work beyond the solely sciency/engineering paths, send them our way! longer It’s weird, but now that I’m no …
The members of the Cattle and Horse Protective association of New Mexico, composed of men who are naturally deeply interested in a copious rainfall, believe that the Salton sea has given New Mexico a better climate. At any rate they want the matter investigated before Uncle Sam dykes up the Colorado river permanently. – Albuquerque …
Continue reading ‘When they thought the Salton Sea would bring New Mexico rain’ »
I woke up super early yesterday, couldn’t get back to sleep. To calm my spinning brain, I layered on some warm clothes and my dayglo construction worker safety vest, grabbed the bike lights off of their charger, and went for a ride. The moon was full, or close to it, sinking into the western sky …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck As the Colorado River Compact’s negotiators got down to work a century ago, their lack of curiosity about how much water the river might be able to provide began to emerge. Colorado’s Delph Carpenter understood that he represented the interests of a headwaters state. Four major rivers, including the …
Eric Kuhn and John Fleck In complex multi-party negotiations like the Colorado River Compact process, it is rare that major progress or breakthroughs happen during one of general sessions. Instead, real progress is more often made during the more candid discussions between smaller groups of negotiators during breaks, after-dinner discussions, and occasionally sub-committees. Most of …
Tony Davis had a great story in the Daily Star over the weekend on the allure of desalination of ocean water as Arizona struggles with shrinking Colorado River supplies. Tony’s excellent work on this question susses out the problems: ocean desal is costly, like really costly ocean desal is energy intensive, like really energy intensive …
Continue reading ‘Desalination, Arizona, and magical thinking’ »
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck Herbert Hoover’s words a century ago were chosen with care. Might it be possible, he wondered, for the state officials gathered around him that day “to agree upon a compact between the seven states of the Colorado Basin, providing for an equitable division of the water supply of the …
Continue reading ‘A century ago, Colorado River Compact negotiations begin’ »
A friend shared this, from the Sandia Lab News, circa 1955: New Dyke Will Give Salton Sea Test Base Protection Against Rapidly Rising Water The steadily rising water level of the Salton Sea in southern California is presenting a problem for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in seeking to safeguard test facilities operated by Sandia …
Continue reading ‘Back in the days when the Salton Sea was rising’ »
Yes. But that’s not stopping me! The Jan. 1 forecasts, courtesy of Angus Goodbody of the NRCS, for flows at Otowi (the head of New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley) and San Marcial (the tail) are for “normal” flows, where “normal” is defined now by the median of flows from 1991-2020. The reason it’s definitely …
Continue reading ‘Is it too early to be optimistic about this year’s Rio Grande flow?’ »
My newest hobby – running down the water story for random patches of Albuquerque. From Sunday’s bike ride, a fallowed vineyard, a bit more than an acre in size. It’s at the base of the sand hills on the east side of the Rio Grande Valley, just down the hill from a Ford dealer. Per …