Archive of posts filed under the water category.

We keep projecting that water use will go up. We keep mostly being wrong.

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Jian Wang and David E. Rosenberg at Utah State have put together an incredibly helpful compilation of past projections of Upper Colorado River Basin consumptive use, as compared to what then actually happened: When averaged over the long term, each scenario of future consumptive use over-estimated the observed consumptive use. Herein lies the space for …

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Robert Moses, the Colorado River, and the tragedy of the anticommons

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[T]he anticommons refers to situations where there are numerous overlapping rights holders (or what might also be seen as numerous policy advocacy coalitions) each with some power to veto or block system or operation change. The tragedy emerges when the composite effect of such power prevents significant change in the system. – Jones, Benjamin A., …

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Retiring coal plants as a Colorado River Basin demand management strategy

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OK, “strategy” is not exactly the right word here, but we take our water conservation where we can find it, eh? Luke Runyon took a nice dive into the water supply implications of the West’s wave of coal plant retirements. Because coal plants use water. Here’s my coauthor Eric Kuhn on the implications: “As a …

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The Future Lake Powell: Feb. 20, Moab

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update: It’s apparently at 6 p.m., not 6:30, thanks to alert reader! My coauthor, Eric Kuhn, will be joining a bunch of other Colorado River smart people tomorrow (Thurs. Feb. 20, 2020) in Moab for an event organized by Utah State’s Center for Colorado River Studies: February 20, 2020 — The Future of Lake Powell Forum …

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“in tribute to a million acre feet” – Herbert Hoover and Arizona’s Gila water

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My thanks to a friend who recently pointed me, as we discussed the appropriate ways to account for Arizona’s use of tributary Colorado River water, to the above bit of history. In the official transcript of a 1946 congressional hearing, which was then gleefully repeated down through the years (you can see it on p. …

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Levels of uncertainty on the Colorado River

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One of the great lessons of the last two decades on the Colorado River is the futility of the “search for certainty”. No one number for “the flow of the Colorado River” can allow us to plan for the future. We face the formidable task of building a river new management framework that is robust …

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In praise of rail lines and ditchbanks

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Somewhere around Mile 22 of a long Sunday bike ride, my friend Scot motioned to a dirt road off to the left, crossing the railroad tracks. “We’re turning there,” he said. The ride down New Mexico state highway 314, through Albuquerque’s South Valley, across Isleta Pueblo and into Valencia County, is a lovely one, urban …

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The Rio Grande’s shrinking snowpack

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A dry January in the Rio Grande headwaters means a shrinking runoff forecast. Otowi (the Compact measurement point on which New Mexico’s Texas delivery obligation is based): 78 percent, which is down from 90 percent on January 1. Still big error bars, because the most important variable is how much snow we get in February …

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