Your plain-English guide to more free-flowing rivers
Water
Posted inBlog
News of a parched West continues to flow
How many times must it be written that in the West, the story is water, and how many times must the story of the West’s dependence on the Colorado River for its water be told? Many readers probably know by now, but it bears repeating. The current running beneath many environmental justice stories is water. […]
Posted inRange
How bad projects get built
Editor’s note: David Zetland, a water economist who recently finished a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley 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. RM sent me the “Review budget for Bay Delta Conservation Plan […]
Posted inRange
The Public Trust makes a comeback in California
When the Mono Lake Decision was issued by the California Supreme Court in 1983, environmental spokespersons claimed that it would revolutionize the way water is managed in California. Citing both the ancient Public Trust Doctrine (which dates to Roman Times) and a modern California Fish & Game Code, the state’s highest court stated unequivocally that […]
Posted inRange
A new twist in an old contention
For more than a century — the first court case was filed in 1901 — Kansas and Colorado have fought over the Arkansas River, with Kansas claiming that Colorado keeps too much of its water. Now there’s a new twist in the long dispute. (The two states can’t even agree on how to pronounce the […]
Posted inRange
The Amargosa
The chef at Las Vegas’ Luxor hotel has a special recipe for dates: pit them, stuff the sweet, succulent fruit with cheese, and wrap them in bacon. It’s a recipe that takes skill, planning, and a certain panache. But what’s unique about this hors d’oeuvre isn’t just its sweet and savory flavor, but the fact […]
Posted inGoat
One step forward, one step back
“We suck at managing exempt wells,” Michael ‘Aquadoc’ Campana bluntly declared on his blog late last year. Water experts across the West likely nodded in agreement. And last week, even Montana regulators owned up to this shortcoming. The state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation acknowledged that subdivision developers were exploiting a loophole in state […]
Posted inRange
Who is the California Farm Water Coalition?
Editor’s note: David Zetland, a water economist at the University of California, Berkeley 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. Mike Wade, Executive Director of the California Farm Water Coalition, has often commented (or been quoted) on this blog and […]
Posted inGoat
Rain rights
Let the water wars commence – or not. Douglas County will soon be the site of Colorado’s first large-scale rainwater harvesting project — an important step away from a more than century old state policy that made the practice illegal, perhaps without good reason. The Colorado Water Conservation Board voted unanimously last month to make Sterling Ranch, a […]
Posted inRange
Big Ag sells to Big Urban
Editor’s note: David Zetland, a water economist at the University of California, Berkeley 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. I’ve been participating in an email discussion about Westland’s plan to sell 50-100,000 acre feet of water […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Hula on the hill
“When I first found out about the Cool Water Hula (in 2000), I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard of,” says Tom Malloy, a tall, brawny ex-football player who now works as reclamation manager for the Butte-Silver Bow County Planning Department. “This time, I’m gonna dance in it.” The Cool Water Hula […]
Posted inRange
Thinking broadly about dams in the West
It’s been a bad press week for dams. Last Saturday the Lake Delhi dam gave way, and the previous Tuesday the Tempe Town Lake dam literally exploded. The former disaster involved heavy rains swamping a 1920s-era dam on the Maquoketa River, while the latter resulted from a giant rubber bladder popping on the Salt River. […]
Posted inGoat
Encounters with the Ex-Secretary
In two appearances at the Aspen Environment Forum this week, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and ex-Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt seemed to revel in the impolitic. Offshore drilling is an “unregulated frontier culture full of cowboy operators,” he said during a panel discussion with Shell VP Libby Cheney, Consortium for Ocean Leadership president Robert […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
A river again?
Obama’s EPA extends protection to L.A.’s urban watershed
Posted inRange
A water economist’s hot links
Editor’s note: This link roundup comes from David Zetland, a water economist at the University of California, Berkeley. We will be cross-posting occasional posts and content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. David Zetland Speed Blogging for Tuesday, July 27, 2010 Hattips to RT and JWT Originally posted at Aguanomics.
Posted inGoat
It’s getting warmer in here – and drier
A new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) offers a mixed picture of how climate change will affect Western water supplies. Some places will see more moisture, most will see less. For the majority of the region, sustainability of water resources is set to become a serious problem. The study was conducted by […]
Posted inGoat
Victory for the Creek Freaks
Several years ago, I followed a group of creek defenders down to a little stretch of habitat in Compton, Calif. – yes, that Compton, like Straight Outta Compton – where blue herons alighted on the lightpoles above a natural softbottom creek, a tributary of the Los Angeles River. My guides, from Southern California’s influential nonprofit […]
Posted inRange
Going by the law
With production supposed to start soon, I’ve encountered even more criticism of the Nestle bottled-water operation in Colorado’s Chaffee County, where I live. To make up for the water taken to the bottling plant, water that would have otherwise flowed down the Arkansas River to other users with senior water rights, Nestle made a deal […]
Posted inRange
Pacific Salmon’s Deranged Geographies
Not long ago, Pacific salmon geographies of harvest, consumption, and reproduction were conterminous. Forten millennia, where fish spawned was also where they were caught and eaten, but in the last two centuries industrial fishing techniques launched harvestersdownstream and out to sea, while salting, canning, and freezing technologies expanded consumption across time and space. We now […]
Posted inGoat
A Grand Disappointment
This May, National Geographic Press published Running Dry: A Journey from Source to Sea Down the Colorado River. It’s by Jonathan Waterman, who lives on 20 acres near Carbondale, Colo. As someone who follows water issues, I wanted to like this book. But I couldn’t. That’s because I ran across so many errors at […]