High good, low bad: Mead in June 2011
Posted on | July 6, 2011 | 1 Comment
Source: Water Resource Planning in Washington County, Utah and the Lake Powell Pipeline, Presented at the Nevada Water Resource Association meeting February 3, 2011 by Corey Cram of the Washington County Water Conservancy District
Not only is this normally first-of-the-month post about Lake Mead late, it’s not even about Lake Mead. I find that the other great storage reservoir on the Colorado River, Lake Powell, was the more interesting of the big drinks in June. The Salt Lake Tribune found Utah’s Department of Water Resources taking state legislators for a plane ride over Utahn water ways. Whee.
Unlike leaner years, there was plenty of gleaming snowpack to sell any number of projects, not least the patently crazy proposal for a $1.1bn pipeline from Lake Powell into the snowbird communities of Washington County. That stretch of old Mormondom is to the south of the state, along the border of Nevada’s dry Lincoln County. This is where the Mojave Desert extends into Utah, a place called “Dixie” by the locals, where they only gamble, drink or smoke during trips to nearby Vegas.
Not long ago, a big business here was in ghost town tours. Now it’s in building retirement housing. The ultimate objective of the Lake Powell pipeline is to further populate the Mojave on the back of an already disastrously over-allocated Colorado River. Not all the local folks love the plan. I hadn’t heard of Citizens for Dixie’s Future until just landing on their website, but I like their catch phrases for the pipeline: “expensive,” “unreliable,” “unnecessary,” and “sprawling.”
Why would anyone tap the Colorado river more deeply when everyone agrees that it’s already crazily over-allocated? Because Utah is legally entitled to do it, and its developers are as greedy as our developers. Unlike our developers, they actually have legal claim to as yet un-used water. Unable traditionally to truck their water long distances, the “upper” Colorado River basin states such as Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico have often been forced to see it released down stream for use by “lower” basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona, along with Mexico and, heavens forfend, fish. Phoenix, San Diego and LA all owe much to these surpluses. The Lake Powell pipeline would pull another 100,000 acre feet of water from the Colorado River, most of which would go to desert retirement communities such as St George.
If you’re wondering if more for them means less for us, the answer is yes.
The other Whoa, Nellie point, made almost en passant in the Tribune piece, refers to pending Utah legislation to buy sleeping Navajo rights for 81,500 acre-feet of Colorado River water. That is enough for 160,000 homes. Make that 80,000 in Utah, a state whose residents Vegas Water Manager Pat Mulroy rightly describes as being unable to spell “conservation.” This is fascinating because, again, the river is gaining abusive users while, for the most part, the amount of water in it is declining. Here, a product of brief surfing, is an article on the subject from the Navajo Times. Interested persons could spend a lot of time searching “water rights” at this newspaper. What all this means, I don’t know, other than less water in the river.
On that note, click here for the closing elevation of Lake Mead.
Tags: Emily Green > Lake Mead > Lake Powell Pipeline > Washington County Utah
The Dry Garden: Blown away
Posted on | July 1, 2011 | 7 Comments
Two men, 180 decibels, maybe three rake-fulls of leaves.
What would you do if a neighbor came to you and asked, “For 20 minutes every week, may I turn on your vacuum cleaner, smoke detector and garbage disposal and run them all at once?”
Holding that thought, consider if the neighbor added, “Ah, may I also blow noxious dust your way for those same 20 minutes?”
Imagine that not just one neighbor on the street asked it, but eight. Imagine that each one just wanted their 20 minutes to blare noise and blow dust. It would be sometime between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. Add up the minutes and they would equal about six straight days of noise a year. The dust would stay suspended longer, an element of smog.
Given the choice, most people would say “no” in terms unrepeatable here, so most Angelenos don’t ask for permission. They just blast noise and blow dust at their neighbors. They call it gardening.
Click here to keep reading about, you guessed it, leaf blowers, in this week’s Dry Garden in the Los Angeles Times.
The Dry Garden: Master gardener
Posted on | June 24, 2011 | No Comments
Color is everywhere. Fruit is all around. But the most persistent sensation to be experienced in Yvonne Savio’s garden is softness. The soil is so springy, so voluptuous that you could fall into it and come up laughing — provided that you fell into the terraced half-acre slope and not off of it, in which case you might land on the roof of the house that Savio’s father built in 1950.
Click here to keep reading about the garden of the woman behind LA’s Master Gardener program in this week’s Dry Garden in the LA Times.
The Dry Garden: Seeing a park about a toad
Posted on | June 17, 2011 | No Comments
It’s raining this morning in Altadena, California. Emily Green, that would be me, is on vacation and will be back next week columnizing about how to garden in dry conditions when it’s not so conspicuously wet. In the meantime, read Louis Sahagun’s piece in the Los Angeles Times about how Forest Lawn Cemetery wants to fell 835 oak, sycamore and walnut trees to make way for new paying customers, aka dead people. Then opt for woodland burial or cremation. Or check out Jeff Spurrier’s series on community gardens in the Home Section. Later today, the Home Section blog will include a photo essay by staff photographer Anne Cusack on the sprawling hillside cactus garden of UCLA plant physiologist Park Nobel. No morning is complete in this house without checking Aquafornia, the newsfeed of the Water Education Foundation. This being a vacation, however, even that pleasure may be supplanted by going toad-spotting in the foothills. Here’s what looks like a little California toad spotted by John Garrett earlier this week at Hahamonga Watershed Park in Pasadena. The Dry Garden will be back next Friday.
Advocating for the future
Posted on | June 13, 2011 | No Comments
Denied the full rate hike that it sought from an irate city council last year, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power acceded to pressure to create a position for a “rate payer advocate.” The fear among conservationists was that the council and advocate would then thwart future rate hikes needed to replace leaking pipes, for conservation and a shift to alternative energy. One and a half general managers later (one was interim), the LADWP is now staging public workshops to explain to the public why it needs to invest now for water and power security later. The graphic above comes from a PowerPoint that accompanies the DWP meeting schedule. The first meeting, in Van Nuys, is scheduled for this Wednesday from 6.30-9pm at the Marvin Braude Constituent Center. Click here for background and here for the full workshop schedule.
UPDATE 6/15/11: The Los Angeles Times reports today that the utility is characterizing conservation and aggressive pipe repair as a “choice” but that LA City Council member Jan Perry plans on slowing down any rate hikes until the rate payer advocate position is filled, which could take months.
“The basic rate hikes proposed Tuesday would mean the average residential customer’s electricity bill would increase by about $4 each year, for three years,” reports the Times. “The water bill would increase by more than $2 each year. Some revenue from those hikes would pay for mandated shifts to renewable energy. But they would not cover $37 million in outlays needed to upgrade water pipelines or $16 million needed to enhance water conservation programs. They also would not cover $366 million in improvements and conservation projects in the agency’s electricity service, [General Manager Ron] Nichols said.”
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Los Angeles Department of Water and Power > rates
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