Via John Fleck is this Santa Fe New Mexican article that puts some great perspective on the state’s peak water woes: New Mexico’s water math isn’t adding up. Real water plus paper water are supposed to equal water supply, but it doesn’t, especially during drought. Real water: That’s wet water, the stuff one needs for [...]

I bring this up in the concept of peak water, in that communities across the West are dealing with drought, in addition to the question of water supplies. The effects are actually being felt throughout the southern half of the U.S. Take, for example, this article in USA Today: Severe dryness across California and Arizona [...]

John Fleck has an interesting addition to the water stories I was blogging about earlier this week. Fleck talks about some new research indicating, well, I’ll just let him say it: Global warming is turning the Southwest into a permanent Dust Bowl, where the dry conditions of our worst 20th century droughts — the 1930s [...]

Water has been a pretty big story the last few days. For starters, there’s this article up in Julia‘s rag: “We need to get on a sustainable footing as a society and not expect more out of the river than it’s able to deliver,” Harris, a raft guide in Pilar who also runs the nonprofit [...]

Bill Richardson today line-item vetoed (PDF — check page 243) $945,000 to study the ecology of the Gila River. The funding was tied to the Arizona Water Settlements Act, which might provide 14,000 acre-feet of water per year. In addition, the act sets aside $66 million for water projects in southwest New Mexico. This is [...]

There’s an interesting discussion of sorts underway in the comments section of John Fleck’s blog over the recent release of a study on the Colorado River. Tom Yulsman wrote the following: [N]othing in the NRC report sounded terribly new. We knew that droughts much worse than what we’ve experienced in the last 100 years have [...]

I wrote a story in today’s Silver City Daily Press about House Bill 42 (PDF of the bill here, of my story here). There’s quite a bit going on here. On one side, you have the Gila Conservation Coalition and Rep. Mimi Stewart, arguing that the $66 million tied to the Arizona Water Settlements Act [...]

From Fridinger’s List: Understanding the Present, Planning for the Future January 11-14, 2007 Silco Theater 311 N. Bullard St. Silver City, NM Free Admission (Speakers on large screen DVD) Peak Oil is the point in time when world oil production begins to decline – FOREVER. Each session features a large-screen presentation of the speaker, with [...]

Representatives from Sen. Pete Domenici’s office were in town to meet with local residents and officials yesterday. The topic: the Southwest Water Planning Group. Comprised of eighteen governments and quasi-governmental agencies in the four counties in southwest New Mexico, the planning group was established to decide what to do with 14,000 acre-feet of water granted [...]

John Fleck is still my go to guy for climate and weather stuff, and his article in yesterday’s Journal is a must read: So is the drought over? That was probably the most-asked question in New Mexico last week, as long-awaited rains hit the state with so much force that floodwaters damaged neighborhoods from Rio [...]

Via Headwaters News I came across this must-read article on population growth and water demand along the Rio Grande basin. Staci Matlock writes today in the Santa Fe New Mexican: Cities in the basin that splits New Mexico lengthwise are growing at an unprecedented rate and with it their need for water. Their demands compete [...]