How it’s done in the desert
A REMORSELESS game of political chess being played out by the two driest states in the country moved inexorably toward checkmate last week in Washington DC.
Mount Wheeler, the peak whose snowmelt feeds this stream in the Great Basin Desert, stands in Nevada. But Wheeler’s water serves Snake Valley, which straddles the Nevada-Utah border.
Congressional maneuvering over which state has the rights to how much of Mt Wheeler’s water began in 2004, when in a land bill pushed by the Nevada delegation, Congress granted right of way for a Las Vegas pipeline that would eventually run hundreds of miles into the Great Basin to tap Snake Valley.
But hours before the vote, Utah Senator Bob Bennett slipped a clause into the bill dictating that no water could be taken from border valleys without Utah’s consent.
As negotiations took …
Why cacti have thorns
High good, low bad: Mead in July
Lake Mead is the Colorado River Reservoir holding water supplies for California, Arizona, Nevada and the Republic of Mexico. The Landsat photos (left) compare water levels between 1990-2009. The red rim in the lower right image marks the receding water line.
The maximum elevation is 1,229 feet. The closing elevation for July 2009 was 1,094.20. The lake has dropped 31.53 feet in the last five years.…
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. …
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