Lissa, an able book research field assistant (by which I mean she happily listens to my yammering, asks the best questions, and indulges the vital forays into the field to see stuff), joined me on a drive yesterday afternoon to the Barelas Bridge, one of seven Rio Grande crossings in the river’s Albuquerque reach. There’s …
In the wake of a Colorado River Water Users Association meeting that was by turns exuberant (We got to see one another for the first time since the Before Times!) and stark (The reservoirs are nearly empty!), Anne Castle and I have a new paper out this week in a special issue of the journal …
The caption of the picture above is a bit of a fib, but it was true when I wrote it. I had to click through on the picture’s geotag to figure out that it was taken where the Sausal Drain connects to the Jaral Lateral near Belen in Valencia County, New Mexico. Not exactly lost, …
We’re entering the end-of-year water accounting phase of the Rio Grande hydrograph in central New Mexico, with big flows coming out of the Rio Chama, the largest tributary in this stretch of our “big” river. As I’ve written before, relatively higher December flows are a weird artifact of water management rules, which do accounting on …
Continue reading ‘Big flows on central New Mexico Rio Grande as feds move water’ »
Daniel Rothberg yesterday published a very helpful Q and A with John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada Water Authority that gets to the heart of one of the really important discussions now underway in the Colorado River Basin: Rothberg: You mentioned not that long ago, testifying in Congress, that “the river community is far from …
FYI all, I’ve deleted the post with the soil moisture map. It was dated 2020, not this year. That’s what get for enthusiastically curling up in my comfy chair with my new laptop and blogging while still on first cup of coffee.
One of the conceptual riddles Bob Berrens and I are working through in the new book we’re pursuing on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande, and the work surrounding it, is the ecosystem goods and services across our valley floor provided by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s web of irrigation ditches. Where once we had …
Continue reading ‘On the ecosystem benefits of irrigation systems’ »
I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time the last few weeks pointing and clicking on the new OpenET project’s “data explorer”. Using satellite data and magical algorithms, OpenET allows me to look at an arbitrary bit of land and retrieve an estimate of the amount of “evapotranspiration” – essentially outdoor water use – for …
Per Dan McKay and Theresa Davis at the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico State Engineer John D’Antonio is stepping down. In doing so, he was sharply critical of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s decision to not ask the New Mexico legislature for increased funding for his depleted department despite booming state revenue: [H]e cited a …
I’m heading to Phoenix tomorrow (Wed. Nov. 10) to appear on what I hope will be a useful PBS Newshour live event: The Colorado River runs nearly fifteen hundred miles, winding through seven states and Mexico. It supplies drinking water to nearly 40 million people, irrigates nearly 4 million acres of farmland and attracts millions …
Continue reading ‘Watch Live: Tipping Point – The Colorado River Basin’ »