From a great Circle of Blue interview, Pat Mulroy of the Southern Nevada Water Authority has some great insights into how we value water, but also how we think about paying the resulting costs:
[W]e in the water business stand back, and we become amazed that somebody is willing to pay $US 80, $US 90, $US 100 for their cable bill, to pay that much for their cell phone bill, but they’re not willing to pay $14.90 for their water bill.
I recommend the full interview.
One might expect the Las Vegas mob experience to involve criminal activity. But the Las Vegas Mob Experience, a tourist trap?
Financing for the Las Vegas Mob Experience tourist attraction likely involved a “fraudulent transaction” and “the earmarks of a Ponzi scheme,” a court-appointed accountant has determined.
(With a hat tip to Tampa Bay Times reporter Craig Pittman’s Oh #Florida series. I’m thinking Vegas can compete.)
Henry VonHankelton
Intriguing paper by Pierson and colleagues, looking at a big demographic survey of the great saguaro cactus:
Averaged across the region, saguaro regeneration rates were highest from 1780 to 1860, coincident with wet conditions and high Pinus ponderosa recruitment in the highlands. Milder and wetter winters and protection from livestock grazing likely promoted late 20th century regeneration surges at some sites. Predictions of saguaro population dynamics in the 21st century likely will be confounded by the saguaro’s episodic and asynchronous regeneration, continued urbanization, ongoing grass invasions and associated wildfires, and changing climate.
In the midst of reading Nate Silver’s book
In this morning’s briefing, the forecasters were careful to explain that they’re not making predictions here, but rather forecasting odds – “probabilistic” in the jargon: “These impacts are not guaranteed,” Halpert said. But the forecasts do provide useful information that we can combine here in New Mexico with what we know with certainty about the conditions on the ground to begin to get a clearer picture of the drought risk we face.
And those things we know include the fact that our reservoirs are mostly empty (pdf) and the soil moisture is not very moist. So, if I may indulge in a bit of value-laden reportage, a pretty crappy forecast indeed.
Here in the arid West, land of the pioneer spirit and the rugged individual, we have a longstanding tradition of sticking someone else with the bill for our water projects.
The carefully constructed edifice that is Law of the (Colorado) River is complex set of legal and institutional deals among the basin’s water users built on a foundation of US taxpayers picking up the tab for the big water projects that make the whole thing work. In California, the histories of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project are a rich tale of figuring out how to spread costs thinly across the largest possible base of taxpayers.
So it was with interest that I read the stories over the last few days about the way the parties warring over the Sacramento Delta have scratched out a deal on a package of projects everyone can agree on. Here’s Matt Weiser:
The Coalition to Support Near Term Delta Projects has met quietly for six months. Its three dozen members cover the range of animosity and accusation in the long-running water wars that have bedeviled the Delta, from environmentalists and levee managers to Delta farmers and Los Angeles water exporters.
Yet somehow, they have agreed to support 43 projects, including levee upgrades, habitat improvements, wildlife research and a proposal to recycle the Sacramento region’s sewage.
And Alex Breitler:
In one case, a group of about 80 farmers, environmentalists and water providers recently voiced support for more than 40 Delta projects totaling $770 million. Those projects will be discussed in a Senate committee hearing Monday.
Ah, but how to pay for all this? The California Legislative Analysts’ report for Monday’s hearing (pdf) suggests this effort is in keeping with the aforementioned longstanding tradition.
Regional water planning, it turns out, is the first step toward One World Government:
The Integrated Regional Water Management Plan may sound harmless, but it is part of this “regionalization” program. Control of water on rural lands will transfer from landowners to government control agents or “water masters,” who will begin their work imposing limits on individual water use (20 percent by 2020). If you control the water, you control the people.
Be very afraid:
Many rural areas are being “cleansed” of people using the regionalization process.
Chapter 8.5 of Agenda 21. Look it up. (Oh wait. I did look it up. It doesn’t say that. But never mind. Very afraid! Other!)
Salt-Verde watershed
At the risk of a “dog bits man” blog post, yet another analysis has concluded that droughts in the southwestern United States are likely to be worse, and rivers drier, as a result of rising greenhouse gases. This time, it’s the Verde in Arizona, part of the watershed that feeds the greater Phoenix area:
Results show that under all scenarios, the distribution functions of hydrologic states will shift towards lower values and droughts will progressively become more frequent, longer and more intense.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
One of the problems with droughts is that, eventually, they end.
That is by definition, because “drought” is the dry part of the range of variability for a given place. When you’re in one, the marginal value of water (and therefore marginal cost you’re willing to pay) is high. When you come out of it? Not so much. But there is a permanence to big water infrastructure that is making this whole thing a bit of a mess right now in Queensland now that Australia’s big dry is gone:
French water giant Veolia is set to reap more than $30 million a year from Queensland taxpayers to babysit billions of dollars-worth of drought-busting infrastructure that is surplus to requirements and set to be switched off.
Oh yeah, and it’s the French.
The typical “out with the old” etc. celebrations don’t have much resonance as New Mexico stares down a new water year. From the morning paper:
New Mexico faces three problems in the new water year.
The first problem is the winter forecast itself. There were signs of an El Niño forming, a climate pattern driven by warm water in the equatorial Pacific ocean that tips the odds toward wetter winters in New Mexico. El Niño is no guarantee, but it improves our chances of extra storms to make up some of the long-term drought shortfall.
But this year’s El Niño has been slow and weak, not offering a very hopeful forecast as a result.
Second, after two consecutive drought years, the state’s watersheds are like a dry sponge right now, King said. A big chunk of whatever snow we get this winter will simply soak into dry ground before runoff can start reaching streams and rivers. “The watershed will take its bite first,” he explained.
The third problem may be the most vexing.
In recent years, for a given size snowpack, water managers have seen substantially less water actually making it into New Mexico’s rivers, King noted.
Scientists at both New Mexico State University and the University of New Mexico are looking closely at the puzzle in search of answers. While the reason behind the runoff drop-off remains a mystery, it is consistent with what you would expect as New Mexico’s temperatures rise, noted UNM professor David Gutzler, one of the scientists looking at the issue.
