High good, low bad: Mead in 2011
When the federal Bureau of Reclamation recorded the closing elevation of Lake Mead to be almost 1,133 feet at midnight, December 31, the 2011 rise in the largest storage reservoir on the Colorado River was more than 46 feet, the first annual gain since 2005 and the largest since 1957 — so big that the decanting of last year’s snowpack has been causing a series of earthquakes in the Arizona desert. As Mead hits 56% full, and the other major storage reservoir on the Colorado, Lake Powell, sits at 66%, the bad news is that snowpack building up this year around the Colorado’s headwaters in the Rockies is significantly down, as is Northern Californian snowpack in the Sierra. Locally, rainfall is also below normal. By way of explaining the artwork, the Reclamation graphic above contrasts projected flow and demand in a river supplying roughly a third of Southern …
High good, low bad: Mead in January 2011
The Economist is the latest migratory Eastern (English this time) high flier to take a pass over Lake Mead and notice the “bathtub ring,” then to quote Las Vegas water manager Pat Mulroy, who said that Southern Nevada is the “canary in the mine shaft” of western water scarcity. That would be true if canaries were the ones running the mines. Anyway, as far as January on the Colorado River went, a far more interesting story appeared last month in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which reported that work on the “starter tunnel” for the “third straw” for Las Vegas to draw water from an ever-shallower Lake Mead will need to begin afresh because of persistent flooding problems. Click here to read Henry Brean’s report.
Meanwhile, for those who follow such things, Lake Mead closed at 1,091.73 feet, or thereabouts. By way of characterization, suffice it to say that the elevation …
High good, low bad: Mead in November 2010
National Suicide Statistics at a Glance. Smoothed, Age-Adjusted Suicide Rates* per 100,000 Population All Races, All Ethnicities, Both Sexes, Ages 10 Years or Older, United States, 2000–2006. Source: CDC
The Nevada water community chatter yesterday was about a new report ranking the Las Vegas economy as one of the worst in the world. It’s the first and hopefully the last time that I will see Las Vegas compared to Barcelona. However, the story that interested me was this one, in Monday’s Las Vegas Sun, about the suicide danger of the new Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. It’s notable for two reasons. First is the stunning image by Sun staff photographer Sam Morris, who may be the most talented snapper working in the Western press. Second, I was struck by what wasn’t there. Why wasn’t there more concern about who will jump?
Anyone who has visited Las Vegas will know that …
High good, low bad: Lake Mead in October 2010
“The advice given to boaters here these days – ‘If you haven’t been to Lake Mead lately, you haven’t been to Lake Mead’ – sounds like a marketing slogan dreamed up to lure return business,” writes Shaun McKinnon in the Arizona Republic. “Except in this case the advice is true. The drought on the Colorado River has reshaped the huge reservoir so dramatically in the past 11 years that it bears little resemblance to the lake captured in snapshots just a few years ago. Water levels have dropped 133 feet. Islands have emerged and grown. Rocky outcroppings push through the surface, creating watery obstacle courses whose paths shift almost daily.”
Click here to keep reading or here for hourly elevation reports from the US Bureau of Reclamation. Lake Mead closed October at 1,082.35, less than 10 feet of the point where shortages will be announced for Arizona and …
Floyd Dominy, 1909-2010
Click on the photo of Glen Canyon Dam to enlarge the image, or click on the Dominy napkin sketch of the same thing for a beautiful account of a 1997 dinner at the former Reclamation commissioner's home by Glen Canyon Institute president Richard Ingebretsen. "We met at his house in the afternoon. On his several acre property were over one dozen dams; he is a beaver to be sure," Ingebretsen wrote.
“Floyd Dominy, who made it his mission to improve nature by, among other things, damming the Colorado River at Glen Canyon and creating the more user-friendly Lake Powell, has died at the age of 100,” reports the High Country News.
“Some had hoped that Glen Canyon Dam would go first … ” To keep reading click here.
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