Steven Meade doesn’t hide his frustration. As treasurer of the Atlanta Water Association in Atlanta, Idaho, he has the unenviable task of coming up with money to fix his community’s water-quality problems. And Atlanta has had its share. A century of gold mining that ended in 1963 leached heavy metals into the nearby Boise River. […]
Water
Posted inRange
It’s Raining Rain Gardens
By Lisa Stiffler, Sightline.org Researchers have pointed the finger at stormwater runoff as the top source of pollution that’s getting into Puget Sound and other Northwest waterways. And because runoff comes from just about everywhere — roofs, roadways, parking lots, farms, and lawns — the solution has to be just as widespread. Enter 12,000 Rain […]
Posted inGoat
Water Sharing in the Over-shared West
If you were to trace the dips and rises in water sales across the American West onto a graph, the line would fall in synch with basic economics. In a recession, when dollars are scarce, water transactions are few and far between. But when a region booms, freeing up cash for all kinds of development, […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Sedimentation is a building problem in the West’s reservoirs
Gary Esslinger, manager of Elephant Butte Irrigation District in southern New Mexico, spends as much time moving silt as he does water. Elephant Butte Reservoir, built in 1915, is fed by the naturally muddy Rio Grande, which drains 28,000 square miles of easily eroded desert in two states. Sediment has claimed 600,000 acre-feet of its […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters: Silt and the Slow Demise of Glen Canyon Dam
Updated 5/17/11 The Lower San Juan River courses through a rather forsaken landscape of clay hills and redrock plateaus in southeast Utah. At the end of a long, dusty road, there is a boat ramp at the water’s edge where, at any warm time of year, vans and roof-racked Subarus bake in the sun while […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Explorer’s notebook: Craig Childs on the Lower San Juan
Craig Childs reads from his journal and narrates his paddle down the Lower San Juan River, with photos and video he took on the trip. Additional photography courtesy of andrew davidoff, Alaskan Dude, and kla4067. Licensed under Creative Commons. Canyon treefrog recording copyright Jeff Rice and the Western Soundscape Archive.
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Siltation expert: We need more dams
George Annandale has worked all over the world, studying, constructing and retrofitting dams and reservoirs to manage the sediment they accumulate. A native South African, Annandale, 59, is a water resources program leader for Golder and Associates, an international engineering and consulting firm. High Country News Executive Director Paul Larmer caught up with him in […]
Posted inArticles
Photographer Sharon Stewart on the acequia tradition
This April, as the communal irrigation ditches known as acequias run with spring melt and farmers carve new furrows into their fields, many northern New Mexico villages will celebrate their annual homecoming. This is the time of the limpia –– the cleaning of the acequia, when water-rights holders and their families gather to haul rocks, […]
Posted inArticles
Peter McBride on photographing the contentious Colorado River
International photographer and Colorado native Peter McBride spent the past three years making images of the Colorado River. His work has been turned into several magazine articles, a book, a museum exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and a short film. Here, he talks about what has become of the Colorado River […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 10
As temperatures climb in late March, the heavy snowpack on Colorado’s Western Slope start its inexorable journey to the sea, carrying with it a heavy load of silt. This shot of the aptly named Muddy Creek was taken just above Paonia Reservoir. Just below the dam, these waters join the much clearer flows of Anthracite […]
Posted inArticles
California crab-boat captain powers through tsunami to safety
Alan Mello got a call at 3 a.m. last Friday about the tsunami on its way from Japan. The 57-year-old started fishing from Crescent City, on California’s northern coast, in 1973. He’s had to motor out to sea three times to keep his commercial fishing boat from being damaged by tsunamis. Crescent City has the […]
Posted inRange
Learning from a book on California’s ag-emperor Boswell
Editor’s note: David Zetland, a Western water economist, offers an insider’s perspective into water politics and economics. We will be cross-posting occasional posts and content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. In this book, Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman illustrate the fascinating details behind a family that combined hard work, farming wisdom and […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
In Navajoland, a contentious water deal divides the tribe
The Navajo Nation sprawls across about one-tenth of the nearly quarter-million-square-mile Colorado River drainage. But ever since the seven states that depend on the river met to divide its water 88 years ago, the tribe has been pushed into the shadows of river politics. About 40 percent of the reservation’s roughly 170,000 residents still don’t […]
Posted inBlog
U.N. human rights expert visits California tribe
Arron Sisk took the smoldering sunflower root and undulated it from Catarina de Albuquerque’s feet to the top of her head, its pungent smoke curling above her like a spectral crown. He then held it beneath her nose, and told her the root would clear her mind from bad thoughts, allow her to see and […]
Posted inGoat
Crow Tribe to vote on water compact
Federal settlement could fund reservation infrastructure improvements.
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 6
I had never really listened to a body of water talk; but this small reservoir at the confluence of the Uncompaghre and Gunnison rivers in Delta, Colo., insisted on a conversation as its ice-covered skin loosened and shifted under a strengthening Spring sun. It’s voice sounded like the deep groans of whales, punctuated by thunderous […]
Posted inRange
Quenching Colorado’s thirst
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Every winter in Colorado we watch our snowpack levels closely because they tell us how much water we’ll have in reserve for use on our farms and in our homes when the weather warms. Last week’s snowpack update showed that, due to a relatively dry January, supplies in […]
Posted inRange
Washington runoff causes stormwater stomachaches
By Lisa Stiffler Stormwater obviously causes problems for the environment and infrastructure, washing away salmon eggs in torrents of runoff and flooding basements. But does it threaten human health as well? You bet it does, and in ways that might surprise you. Polluted runoff flushes raw sewage across beaches, triggers blooms of toxic algae in […]
Posted inRange
Artificial Flooding May Help Grand Canyon
By David Frey, 2-09-11 When Glen Canyon Dam blocked the natural flow of the Colorado River to create Lake Powell, it unleashed a torrent of effects downstream, including in the Grand Canyon, where the once-muddy river became a blue waterway where native plants and animals struggled to survive. And they say the artificial flooding will […]