My colleagues with the Colorado River Research Group have a new policy brief out today taking another whack at the question of “assigned water” – water kinda sorta conserved, but left in storage so water agencies can pull it out again at some future date. Think “Intentionally Created Surplus” (ICS). At this point, nearly 40 …

Continue reading ‘Does our current approach to Colorado River accounting hide a looming problem?’ »

As near as I can tell from a lazy visit to the Wayback Machine, it was sometime around 2014 that I added the old Metropolitan Water District Colorado River Aqueduct map to my blog header. It’s a lovely map that has served me well these many years, but it doesn’t match my brand any more. …

Continue reading ‘A minor blog redesign, which is a metaphor’ »

I put up a slide for my University of New Mexico water resources graduate students during class yesterday afternoon with two pictures – the emerging canyons at the upper end of Lake Powell, and a smallmouth bass. When Lake Powell gets low, we get a) the remarkable emergence of Cataract Canyon, and b) warm water …

Continue reading ‘Tools for better environmental adaptation as we manage the Colorado River’ »

This version of the Colorado River graph, courtesy of Jack Schmidt, more clearly illustrates the narrative of the talk I’m giving later this week: Early 20th century pluvial, when we built the institutions Mid-century baseline, when we built all the dams and farms and cities Millennium drought, when we emptied the reservoirs  

Putting together a slide deck for a talk next week, borrowing Brad Udall’s trick of a horizontal line for visualizing the mean during different time periods.

By Jack Schmidt Unfortunately, water use between now and next April is on track to exceed the inflows of the snowmelt season, resulting in a net loss of reservoir storage. The persistent decrease in runoff is severely challenging the quest to rebuild reservoir storage.   Summary Reservoir storage in the Colorado River basin is now …

Continue reading ‘Reservoir Drawdown in 2024: Are We on Track to Recover Storage?’ »

A federal judge this week criticized the federal government for failing to consider the risk of a Colorado River Compact call in its environmental review of the planning for Denver Water’s expansion of Gross Reservoir in Boulder County. Wrangling over the risk of a compact call – which the judge said could force water use …

Continue reading ‘Federal Judge Cites Upper Colorado River Basin’s Compact Call Risk’ »