Driving down a highway, somewhere this side of the New Mexico line, I see a house surrounded by rusted out farm implements. I see a field, churned up and parched under another bright blue October sky. I see a dam being built. A dam!? Yes, a dam. The era of huge Western water projects has […]
Water
Posted inGoat
Is the future of Western water in jeopardy?
Updated 10/22/2012, 12:14 p.m., MDT “Supreme Court decision could lead to ‘water anarchy’ in the West““U.S. on the verge of water anarchy““Utah’s water future in court”“Ruling key to Colorado water future““Upcoming ruling key to New Mexico’s water future“ These headlines, splashed across major Western newspapers in recent weeks, and in the influential website Politico and […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
The true believer and the skeptic: A review of River Republic and A Ditch in Time
Two optimistic new books exhort Americans to embrace the challenges of their aging water infrastructure, but they provide sharply opposing views. In River Republic: The Fall and Rise of America’s Rivers, political scientist Daniel McCool calls on citizens to undo the damage done to the country’s waterways by the engineers of yore. In contrast, in […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Only more water will help the Bay Delta
Emily Green’s story, “Tunneling under California’s water wars,” reads as if it were written by Governor Jerry Brown’s office (HCN, 8/20/12). Those who extract water from the Bay Delta want a reliable supply. Unfortunately, that is not possible. We must adapt to a future with less water, not continue to demand more. Merely moving the […]
Posted inRange
Enviros worry about Utah tar sands water pollution
By David Hasemyer, InsideClimate News The debate over whether oil sands mining should be allowed in Utah inched forward this week when an environmental group and the company that wants to open the mine both filed papers responding to a judge’s recent ruling on whether water resources will be adequately protected. Administrative Law Judge Sandra Allen ruled […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
Money trumps prudence
The picture here is one of common sense and ethical behavior being given up and replaced with an attitude of do whatever it takes to make money (HCN, 8/6/12, ‘The Bakken’s shadow boom‘). Where do they think billions of gallons of polluted water are going to go when reinjected into the very same rock formations […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
A way out of California’s water morass?
This well-written piece accurately portrays the problems and solutions facing California’s beleaguered Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (HCN, 8/20/12, ‘Tunneling under California’s water wars‘). Current operations in the Delta have failed to provide water to family farmers and 25 million Californians, and failed to protect the region’s ecosystem. Doing nothing to improve this situation means more of […]
Posted inGoat
Chinook salmon come home to Elwha River
Five months ago contractors ripped down the final remnants of the Elwha Dam, which along with its upstream counterpart, Glines Canyon Dam, has for a century been blocking the paths of salmon up the Elwha River, which winds through Washington State’s Olympic National Park and empties into the Pacific at the Strait of Juan de […]
Posted inGoat
New podcast, all about drought
The latest edition of HCN‘s monthly podcast, West of 100, is now available for your listening pleasure, and it covers something that’s on everyone’s mind this summer: drought. As of August, more than half of the country was experiencing at least moderate drought — and in many places it was worse than that, with drought conditions that are […]
Posted inArticles
West of 100: Droughts past, present and future
Of course, drought has always been a fact of Western life. But with the specter of climate change hanging over every extreme weather event these days, this year’s drought, and the dry years that have preceded it, have people wondering: Is this normal? Is this the new normal? So for this edition of West of […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Slip-slidin’ away
Thank you for the excellent story “The great runoff runaround” in the July 23, 2012, edition. The article focuses on logging roads, but landslides are another important source of sediment pollution. Landslides are natural in the young, steep, unstable mountains of the American West, but clear-cutting and logging roads increase their rates by one or […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Tunneling under California’s Bay Delta water wars
On July 25, California Gov. Jerry Brown announced to an expectant press corps that the state plans to construct a pair of multibillion-dollar tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta in order to modernize and possibly expand the export of Northern California’s water, mostly south to farms and cities. After decades of rancor over what […]
Posted inGoat
When Robert Redford speaks, I listen
A dignified Eastern lady who enjoys spending days at Boston’s Museum of Fine Art and nights at the theater, my grandmother doesn’t know, or care, very much about water issues in the West. But when the phone rings in her apartment, she often shoots me a sly look and remarks, “that must be Robert Redford, […]
Posted inRange
Desert solitaire: Las Vegas bets big on rural water
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House A water mining project that’s been a quarter-century in the making took a major step forward last week, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recommended approval of a plan for diverting groundwater from three counties in eastern Nevada to Sin City. In its final environmental impact statement (FEIS), the […]
Posted inGoat
Pipe conflict
For over 20 years the vision of a nearly 300-mile long pipeline that would pump groundwater from rural valleys in eastern Nevada to the city of Las Vegas has floated, mirage-like, over the arid state. For the Southern Nevada Water Authority and its powerful general manager, Pat Mulroy, the project is a way to moisturize […]
Posted inGoat
The cloud seeding believers
They might not know it, but golfers in Los Angeles, farmers in the Imperial Valley and retirees in Phoenix are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cloud seeding in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Until I attended the Colorado Water Workshop in Gunnison, Colo. this past July, I had no idea either. Making rain may […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
The Bakken oil play spurs a booming business — in water
The first thing you notice in North Dakota’s oil patch are trucks. They dominate a landscape defined not long ago by cattle and wheat, and not long before that by bison and grass. Trucks groan through Watford City all night. They pile up traffic on highways designed for the occasional car or combine and whip […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
A ride with a Bakken water trucker
Reporter Nicholas Kusnetz spent a day riding with Mike Reynolds, who left his logging business in eastern Washington state in order to earn money as a water trucker in the Bakken. Reynolds is pleased with the job, but eager to return to the work — and the home — he loves.
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Oregon ignores logging road runoff, to the peril of native fish
Tillamook State Forest, OregonChris Winter stands by a dirt road along the South Fork of the Trask River. The scattered clouds pass for a clear spring day in coastal Oregon, where annual precipitation tops 100 inches. Moss-draped red alder and Douglas fir frame the wide channel, where rocks gleam beneath crystalline water. It’s idyllic, and […]