High good, low bad: Mead in February 2011
Two decades ago, a plan to tap the Great Basin Aquifer in five Nevada valleys through a nearly 300-mile-long pipeline to slake inexorably booming Las Vegas was a back-up plan. Plan A was that Nevada’s relatively small allocation from the Colorado River could be increased. Las Vegas is, after all, twenty miles from Lake Mead, the largest storage reservoir in the U.S.
Yet when Western cities kept booming after the Colorado River entered long-term drought in 1991, Plan B became Plan A. Tapping the aquifer of the glorious and sparsely populated counties of Nevada’s Great Basin Desert became a central pillar of the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s long term water plan. Steve …
High good, low bad: Mead in June 2010
There is a telling quirk to most US maps of the Colorado River: They stop at the Mexican border. The river’s once-mighty delta and the Sea of Cortez rarely figure.
Save a few forays south, this delineation holds true in the recently published book “Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century“ by Michael …
High good, low bad: Mead in May 2010
Eleven years into a dramatic drought* on the Colorado River, in 2009, the City of Los Angeles finally saw fit to issue a lawn watering ordinance that reduced sprinkler irrigation to a twice weekly schedule. It was an overdue and obvious step given that roughly half of Southern California’s water supply is used out of doors, and half of that is estimated to be wasted through sprinkler run-off and pavement hosing.
That ordinance, which took effect a year ago today, reduced the city’s water consumption to 1991 levels even though the law was widely flouted, …
High good, low bad: Mead in April 2010
Albuquerque science writer John Fleck spent much of April meandering the Lower Basin of the Colorado River and posting hisĀ impressions. The bird-watching was delightful, particularly in Bellagio Fountain and the Las Vegas Wash. But if you read it (definitely read it) please do not be lulled by his couth tone. Fleck, in common with the scientists who he interviews, gathers facts. The implicit assumption behind this approach is that, armed with these facts, we the public will take action, hopefully in the public interest.
(There is an excellent lecture by University of Oregon philosophy professor Kathleen Dean Moore linked on WaterWired about why most of us fail to do this.)
However, even …
High good, low bad: Mead in March 2010
There is a joke that my father, a former aerospace engineer, used to tell that applies equally well to water as to planes. There is a jolt on a jet and the pilot announces that the plane has lost one engine but still has three more. They will be a half an hour late landing. Soon, there is a second jolt and the pilot announces that another engine has failed, but they still have two engines and will be an hour late landing. After a third jolt brings the announcement that they still have one engine and will be an hour and a half late landing, an engineer from the cabin cries, “If the fourth engine goes, we’ll be up here all night!”
Water wise, in spite of a mild El Nino winter, it looks like the West may be up here all night. The level of Lake Mead, the …
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