All of the controversy relative to the utilization of the Colorado is hampering the fullest development of the stream. As Governor Pittman said, it is impossible to plan ahead with any assurance when there is such conflict. Solution of all these differences is admittedly not easy. The economic and social future of the various Colorado …
Continue reading ‘Game theory on the Colorado River: The prisoner’s dilemma’ »
A recent rapid warmup has brought high flows to the Rio Grande through New Mexico. But with a modest snowpack sitting in the mountains to the north, that means we should expect the early rise to be followed by an early drop. Members of the Inkstain Rio Grande Rapid Response Team (IRGRRT) were busy over …
Continue reading ‘Rapid snowmelt on New Mexico’s Rio Grande’ »
A couple of followup notes related to last week’s post about the news on El Vado Dam on the Rio Chama, crucial to water management on New Mexico’s Rio Grande, thanks to my many alert and thoughtful Inkstain readers…. Rio Grande Compact Debt In the comments, Norm Gaume made a point that’s worth pulling out …
By Eric Kuhn Given how far apart the competing proposals from the Colorado River Upper and Lower Division States are, a legitimate question is – “what happens if we get to the summer of 2026 and there is still no agreement on the post-2026 operational guidelines?” Well, believe it or not, that is a question …
Continue reading ‘What Happens if there is no Agreement on Post-2026 Colorado River Operations?’ »
This month’s update from the U.S. government’s Climate Prediction Center suggests we’re drifting back toward La Niña, which would tip the odds toward a dry winter of 2024-25 for New Mexico and the mountain snowpacks on which we depend.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s announcement at Monday’s meeting of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District that it is halting work on El Vado Dam repairs raises hugely consequential questions about water management in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley. The short explanation for the halt is that the current approach to repairing the 1930s-era dam …
Alert Inkstain reader John correctly questions the impression left by the log scale I used last time ’round in my graph of flow at Otowi: [W]hile I appreciate the usefulness of logarithmic scales for being able to discern patterns at the low end of the flow range, it does somewhat hide the magnitude of the …
It is telling that I got excited when I noticed inflow into New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley approaching “normal”, which I now define as the median of 21st century flow. Our climate-altered world, y’all. A note on the evolution of the graph: I’ve added the “max” and “min” lines back. I dropped them because …
Inspired by Jack Schmidt’s monthly “how much water is in Colorado River storage” posts (see here for last month’s), I’ve been playing with a similar tool to help me think about the status of our reservoirs on the Rio Grande system here in New Mexico. The graph above helps me with two important intuitions about …
Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s Rio Grande reservoirs: Running on Empty’ »
Daniel Rothberg wrote this week about an important case in Nevada that is testing the boundaries of the question of tribal sovereignty: The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe filed a formal motion earlier this month to intervene in a federal regulatory proceeding that could eventually pave the way for a pumped storage hydropower project on the …
Continue reading ‘Tribal sovereignty and pumped storage hydropower in Nevada’ »