jfleck at inkstain (Free subscription) | 19 hours ago
With the 2009 “water year” just completed, it’s time to take stock. The decade just completed, 2000-2009, is the driest 10-year period in the Colorado River Basin in the record, according to preliminary data in the latest draft of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River Annual Operating Plan, a compendium of past data on the [...]
Sacramento Bee (Free subscription) | yesterday
... water supply infrastructure upgrades). $20 million for water quality/public health projects on New River. REGIONAL WATER SUPPLY $1.4 billion $350 million local/regional water conveyance projects. $1.05 billion for integrated regional water management projects, distributed as follows: North Coast: $45 million San Francisco Bay: $132 million Central Coast: $58 million Los Angeles/Ventura counties...
Austinist (Free subscription) | 03/11/2009
... Travis. Other councilmembers will decide on Thursday whether to join them in opposition. The Lower Colorado River Authority and Travis County have already indicated that they are opposed to the new plan. Texas Commission on Environmental Quality rules currently prohibit new treated wastewater effluent discharges into any of the Highland Lakes. LCRA predicts considerable degradation...
Causecast - Latest News (Free subscription) | yesterday
... to over 36 million people and we don't have enough water to go around. We're stealing from the Colorado river and still constantly in danger of drought. So, perhaps contaminating the water we do have with prescription meds isn't such a good idea? Those disposed of pills end up in our drinking water - looks like we might all be on some medications we didn't know about? The pharmaceuticals...
KQED's Climate Watch (Free subscription) | 06/11/2009
Handicapping the demise of Lake Mead has made for lively debate among scientists and engineers in recent years. Ten years of drought on the Colorado River may be offering an unsettling glimpse of the future for a major source of California's water.
The Denver Business Journal (Free subscription) | 06/11/2009
... Water believes enlarging the reservoir — which holds water from South Boulder Creek and the Colorado River piped to it through the Moffat Tunnel — would also make Denver’s water supply better geographically balanced. The system currently collects 80 percent of the water Denver uses from watersheds in the mountains southwest of the city.The draft environmental statement, published...
ProudToBeCanadian Blog (Free subscription) | 04/11/2009
... the original big government idea: to install the equivalent of a massive toll booth right across a river, flood everything behind it and starve everything in front. Conservationists going back a century were right to apprehend that the “renewable” paradigm is crazy. To my mind, as well, the great Hoover dam, built on a scale to choke the Colorado River, was a monument...
Malcolm Redfellow revivus (Free subscription) | 03/11/2009
... experience ... ... and a romantic heart? Malcolm now recalls a night spent in Needles, on the Colorado River, where California is about to trip over into Arizona (and, not far out of your way, into Nevada). He was there because that was where Route 66 ran, and Malcolm (as has repeatedly been evidenced here) has read and re-read his Steinbeck, in this case chapter 12 of The Grapes...
Environment (Free subscription) | 04/11/2009
... feeling the first cold of winter. This is all made possible by water rights this area has from the Colorado River. As this part of the desert is below sea level in some parts, the water flows downhill and an irrigation system delivers it to 500,000 acres of farmland. Without this water the fields would no doubt revert to desert in short order. Some 97 percent of the water diverted...
jfleck at inkstain (Free subscription) | 04/11/2009
... of acre feet of water), you’ll see that total storage in lakes Powell and Mead, the two huge rivers on the main stem of the Colorado River is pretty much the same this year as it was last year. Mead has been dropping while upstream, Lake Powell has been filling. In other words, what we’re seeing here on the short time scale of a single year is the result of a management decision,...
jfleck at inkstain (Free subscription) | 01/11/2009
The Salton Sea is a fascinating case study in the cultural ambiguity of “nature”. Created in 1905 when the Colorado River found a hole in a poorly constructed irrigation intake and flooded low-lying California desert, the Sea has been sustained – sort of – by agricultural runoff. So it’s not at all “natural” by one [...]
SteamboatPilot.com stories (Free subscription) | 01/11/2009
Dec. 12, Chan Zwanzig's birthday, was the latest in the season he ever dipped his kayak into the Colorado River for a run down Gore Canyon. On that Dec. 12, it was like he was kayaking in a Mario Brothers fantasy.
A Change in the Wind (Free subscription) | 02/11/2009
... caused the U.S. to use an additional 165 billion gallons per day. That's equal to more than 12 new Colorado Rivers -- or enough water for everyone in California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, and Michigan. We could never have supplied that much more water without destroying our remaining rivers, lakes, aquifers, and aquatic ecosystems. Conservation and efficiency improvements...
