Political map / weather map
WEATHER is wild. Water policy is dictated by state. This map is as quick an explanation as any as to why congressional delegates from California and Oregon are pushing for a Comprehensive Integrated Water Policy, to be headed by a water czar. More on that after reading a wad of water and energy bills that passed this week and trying to figure out what is happening in the absence of a water czar, or if a water czar would bring any over-arching reason to these bills and their spend-a-thon.
In the meantime, to be taken to the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, click on the heat wave in Oregon.
To be taken to the weekly drought map, a new version of which was published Thursday, click here.
This post has been updated on Friday, July 31st, to account for the delay in reporting on the import of …
Frogs and congressmen
THE “National Water Policy Event” held this last Tuesday and Wednesday shall receive due comment when the various presentations have been through the de-spin cycle.
But in a quick trip to Washington DC and nearby Virginia this week to hear congressmen, commissioners and rival Western utility heads intone about water, not one speaker matched the eloquence of the frogs chorusing from the lily pads in the all but forgotten garden of Ira Noel Gabrielson.
Gabrielson was the first director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. …
Spin on sprinklers
FROM the Water Education Foundation news service Aquafornia this Los Angeles Department of Water and Power press release: Water demand in the City of Los Angeles is at a 32-year low for the month of June as the result of conservation measures introduced last month. LADWP is pleased. We should be too.
Last week, the LADWP press office confirmed to this blog that since it introduced a cash-for-grass program on June 2, it has had 60 successful applications. I don’t know if LADWP is pleased. We shouldn’t be. In a city with more than half a million privately owned homes, this is the lamest number to be found outside of my bank account.
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Makes sense to them
THE EDITORIAL board of the Las Vegas Sun knows a scientific result when it suits the board’s purposes. According to the board, climate modeling out of the University of Colorado showing the potential of the main storage reservoirs on the Colorado River to go dry by mid-century is all the more reason that the Southern Nevada Water Authority should run a pipeline 300 miles north to the foot of the Great Basin National Park and pump its groundwater south to Las Vegas.…
The week that was, 7/20-26/2009
“Dump more stuff into rivers up north, would you?” Harry Shearer, Le Show, July 26, on an AP report that pollutants flushed through the Mississippi river system into the Gulf of Mexico give rise to “Jubilee” days when normally deep water shrimp and crabs flee de-oxygenated water to shallower reaches, where they are more easily caught
“…city officials are considering tampering with the water that helped turn Portland into the craft brewers’ paradise it is today.” Portland Oregonian “End of Beervana” editorial on proposals to treat local water for the parasite cryptosporidium
“The manufacturers have got it down now, they’ve technologically got the tank and bowl working really well together.” Judi Ranton, Portland Water Bureau conservation manager on the 1.28 gallon single-flush efficiency toilet
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North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
