This spring, Brad Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment, spent four months in Australia working with its Department of Water. Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin has seen remarkable water reform in recent years in response to a long and devastating drought. Udall believes those reforms hold important lessons for the Colorado River Basin. HCN assistant editor […]
Water
Posted inWotr
When it comes to importing water, nothing seems too extreme
The West’s history of developing water sources, occasionally stained with instances of outright theft, is probably best described as “complicated.” Our decisions on who should get what water — and how, and from which source they should get it — usually teetered to the side of whatever person in power had the least tolerance for […]
Posted inGoat
The long and winding road…
If you’re familiar with the Klamath River Basin, which straddles the Oregon-California border, you’ve likely heard the story. Leafing back through the High Country News archives, we’ve certainly told it enough times. It goes something like this: It was, in a word, a meltdown. But the disaster also helped catalyze the “peace” that Jenkins wrote […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Rebuilding a river as Washington’s Elwha dams come down
In his autobiography, Conquering the Last Frontier, Olympic Peninsula pioneer Thomas Aldwell described his first encounter with the land that would be his legacy: “Below the cabin was a canyon through which the Elwha River thundered, and 75 feet or so in front of it was a spring of crystal clear water, overhung by vine […]
Posted inRange
Billion dollar baby: Why the Flaming Gorge pipeline is bad for the West
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House A series of billboards were unveiled in western Colorado yesterday, opposing a proposed water pipeline. Overlaying the image of a desiccated river bed is the phrase, “This’ll only cost you $9 billion.” The placards were funded by some non-profits that are fighting the “Regional Watershed Supply Project,” which would […]
Posted inGoat
Utahns oppose Las Vegas’ Snake Valley water grab
In August 2009, the state of Utah sacrificed its western flank in return for development opportunities in its southern bounds. At least, that’s the way many residents in Western Utah’s Snake Valley perceive a water agreement the state inked with Nevada. In that deal, Nevada received rights to the majority of available groundwater in the […]
Posted inGoat
California desal plant irks enviros
Updated 8/26/2011, 4 p.m. The Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit group that works to protect oceans and beaches, just renewed its longstanding fight against a southern California desalination plant. The group has long contended the plant would kill marine animals on account of how it uptakes ocean water. But in June, the San Diego Superior Court […]
Posted inGoat
EPA gets poor grade on keeping drinking water clean
The Environmental Protection Agency was recently reprimanded for its regulation of drinking water and the selection process it uses to select candidates for contaminant regulation. On the bright side, the agency is trying to ensure rural water systems pass muster. The Government Accountability Office just gave EPA officials a scolding for their inabilityto assess which […]
Posted inRange
Know your H2O: The review
Editor’s note: David Zetland, is a senior water economist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who trained in California. We cross-post occasional content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. The Surfrider Foundation sent me this 20 minute video. I liked most of it but had some comments (below). Watch the video and see if […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Re-watering Nevada’s dying Walker Lake
Nevada is the nation’s driest state, and Mineral County is as parched as any place in it. Past the Sierra Nevada’s rain shadow, it’s sagebrush and alkali dust, sun-bleached skies free of clouds. So as a boy, Glenn Bunch, who grew up in Hawthorne, the county seat, spent as much time as he could at […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West: Going with the Monsoonal Flow
Over the past several weeks, the monsoon season has kicked in nicely across the Southwest, reaching up into Colorado, where it has created some spectacular lightning, downpours and sunsets. In my humble opinion, summer afternoons during monsoon season were meant to be spent working (not too vigorously) in the garden and watching the thunderheads build […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Montana’s stream access law stays strong
In late May, as melting La Niña-fed snowpack shoved western Montana’s rivers over their banks, the state began closing fishing access sites, including several on the bloated Bitterroot River. Thus, floodwaters accomplished what some state lawmakers, earlier in the year, could not: Removing anglers from the Bitterroot and other streams. The Republican-dominated state Legislature was […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
No diving allowed
The idea that fertilizing streams — deliberately or inadvertently — is beneficial needs a complete evaluation (HCN, 6/27/11). The stream section immediately below the outfall from a sewage treatment plant may be more productive, but that can contribute to low dissolved oxygen. This means that it is less suitable for spawning; developing eggs and fry […]
Posted inWotr
The gift of runoff in a wet season
One recent evening, a friend and I walked along a mountain creek in central Colorado that only a few hours before had been covered with snow. Boulders once visible had been replaced by froth and waves, and the water velocity was so great that the middle of the creek was a foot higher than its […]
Posted inRange
Portland’s water managers need to grow up
Editor’s note: David Zetland, is a senior water economist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who trained in California. We cross-post occasional content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. “Apparently the “End of Abundance” hasn’t hit Portland yet,” says HG in the email that brought me this story: For the administrator of the […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Spring-cleaning the acequia: A photo essay
On an April morning in northern New Mexico’s upper Pecos Valley, before the sun lit the packed dirt streets of El Cerrito, Ricardo Patricio Quintana walked the irrigation ditch. He began above the first compuerta, a scrap-wood gate that lets water into one family’s field. Every six feet, he scuffed a mark in the dry […]
Posted inGoat
The pulse of the river
For a journalist, sitting through last week’s conference on the Colorado River, hosted by the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado, was a great way to take the river’s pulse — to get a sense of how the river’s water czars, academic wonks, scientists and other minders are thinking about the basin’s […]
Posted inRange
Peak and Ecological Flows in Oregon
As western states face proposals to divert and allocate the last available surface water – winter and wet season water – a debate is raging over how much of that water must be left instream to keep our rivers and their tributaries ecologically dynamic and alive. The recognition that rivers need “peak flows” is a […]