It has become a Frequently Asked Question of late here at Inkstain World Headquarters: John, you’ve frequently been quoted in the past expressing optimism about the future of the Colorado River Basin. Dude, Lake Mead is so low they’re finding dead bodies. Are you still optimistic? My answer, of course, is “yes”. It’s in my …
Continue reading ‘Sure, dead bodies in Lake Mead, whatever. I remain optimistic.’ »
I love living in a town with a ditch bearing the name of co-workers. I love living in a town with a ditch that’s been continuously, tenuously irrigating this land since the 1700s. I love dodging traffic by turning down a “Dead End” street, knowing that only means cars, that bikes can pop out on …
Important observation from Jack Schmidt, Utah State Colorado River guy, on the new constraints on Colorado River management as Lake Powell and Lake Mead drop: “We’re in crisis management, and health and human safety issues, including production of hydropower, are taking precedence,” said Jack Schmidt, director of the center for Colorado River Studies at Utah …
Continue reading ‘Crisis Managemnent on the Colorado River’ »
Audubon’s Jennifer Pitt, one of the most stubbornly optimistic actors in the Colorado River Basin, wrote this Friday: [F]ederal officials project that within two years, the water level in Lake Powell could be so low that it would be impossible for water to flow through the dam’s turbine intakes. When that happens, it’s clear the …
Watching the back-and-forth among the U.S. Department of Interior and the seven Colorado River Basin States over Glen Canyon Dam operations over the last few months, I’d been thinking that we’ve dropped into an area where the rules developed in 2007, and tweaked in the years since, no longer apply. In short, if we use …
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?’ »
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 …
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 …
Lake Powell ended March 2022 at elevation 3,523, down 40 feet from a year ago. Lake Mead, which sees less fluctuation because of the (relatively) steady inflow from Powell upstream, ended March at elevation 1,061.5 – down just 23 feet from last year. “Launch Ramp Closed” is the least of our problems.
Eric Kuhn: One hundred years ago, we had some flexibility because the river was not very well-used. Today, not a drop of the Colorado River reaches the Gulf of California, so we don’t have that luxury. The way I look at it is: we legally allocated water based on an assumption that this river system …