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Yuma’s economy in a single photo
military helicopters over Gila main, Yuma County. By John Fleck People I talked to on my recent trip to Yuma repeatedly ticked off the three components of the regional economy: ag federal (mostly...
View ArticleRisk of Colorado River shortage declaration rising
Tony Davis reports the Bureau of Reclamation’s latest model runs up the odds of a 2016 Lower Basin shortage declaration to one in three: The odds of a shortage in water deliveries to Arizona and other...
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The Code of the Pirates and the Law of the River
Arizona lawyer Grady Gammage, a member of that state’s water establishment, opened a conference I attended last week with an explanation of why he became so engrossed in trying to understand “the Law...
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Water Ranch, Gilbert, Ariz.
Black-necked stilt, Gilbert Water Ranch In Phoenix for a meeting, I had a couple of hours’ hole in my schedule and skipped out to the “Gilbert Water Ranch”. It’s an interesting example of what the...
View ArticleWater projects and federal incentives
The culture of federal water projects has trained state interests, like a puppy to a dog biscuit, to believe that the federal government has limitless federal largesse and that no contract term will...
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ProPublica on the Colorado River Basin solution space
Abrahm Lustgarten and Naveena Sadasivam at ProPublica have launched their eagerly awaited western water series with a great piece today on the impact of agricultural subsidies on water use in the...
View ArticleChandler builds a land use-water use widget
Kathleen Ferris explaining the new ordinance in Chandler, Ariz., creating a linkage between land use and water use as the city builds out its last vacant acreage: Chandler’s new ordinance helps the...
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As Lake Mead drops, who is really vulnerable?
As Lake Mead drops toward a Lower Colorado River Basin shortage declaration, a group of UC Santa Barbara students have done an excellent analysis (pdf of their summary results) that shows where the...
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Arizona – a century of fear that California wants to steal its water
In the fall of 1934, Arizona Gov. Benjamin Moeur dispatched the Arizona National Guard to the banks of the Colorado River near its junction with the Bill Williams to try to block efforts to build what...
View ArticleUpdate on Arizona v. California
Tony Davis asked Arizona officials if they had any actual evidence that California was trying to steal their water. Their official statement: “ADWR is not aware of any California efforts intended to...
View ArticleLower Colorado shortage now unlikely in 2016, maybe not in 2017
Our big wet May looks to have all but eliminated the possibility of a Lower Colorado River Basin shortage in 2016, and it now looks like a better than 50-50 chance we won’t have one in 2017 either,...
View ArticleArizona’s Colorado River zeitgeist
In this morning’s Arizona Star, Tucson journalist Tony Davis asks, “Is California trying to take our water?” In journalism, there’s a joke known as “Betteridge’s Law“: “Any headline that ends in a...
View ArticleWalton on native water rights in the Colorado River Basin
Brett Walton has done us all a great service with a thorough look at the issues surrounding Native American water rights in the Colorado River Basin. Importantly, he’s looking at it not just as a...
View ArticleRegulatory arbitrage and Arizona’s growing nuts
“Regulatory arbitrage” is the business practice of shifting one’s operations to exploit differences in regulatory regimes. This often involves a geographical change, such as moving a factory to a place...
View ArticleWagging my finger at Arizona
I’ve got a piece over at Water Deeply on Arizona’s latest latest self-destructive Colorado River Basin outburst and the clash between state-by-state domestic politics and the realities of management at...
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Decoupling water use from growth: the New Mexico example
Pulling together some New Mexico water use numbers today for one of my University of New Mexico colleagues, I was reminded of a cool paper from a few years back by Peter H. Gleick and Meena Palaniappan...
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Phoenix subsidence and groundwater pumping
A new paper by Megan Miller and Manoochehr Shirzaei at Arizona State describing subsidence in the Phoenix area offers some interesting new data for thinking about the implications of groundwater...
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A plea for more attention to water use demand-side projections
An excellent Laura Paskus story this weekend on a new climate water risk study by Justin Mankin at Lamont-Doherty and colleagues, includes some really important comments from Mankin on the implications...
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On this date in water history: Arizona governor, state senator, fisticuffs...
87 years ago today in Colorado River water management history, water apparently was for fightin’ over: Butte Montana Standard November 27, 1928, page one POLICE CALLED TO STOP BATTLE IN STATE HOUSE...
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