First of all- I’ve always had an outstanding complaint against the world’s headline writers. The water world, especially, is filled with headlines writing checks the content never intended to cash. A journalism grad student friend of mine once reminded me, sheepishly, that editors write headlines. I now see that the complaint extends to book editors…
Just briefly… I once asked “Does anyone actually want a spot market for water?” – meaning, if we allowed instant trading of water rights on some sort of exchange from the imagination of Paolo Bacigalupi, would anyone (especially, any city) actually use it? They rely on predictability and reliability of delivery of their water to…
I’ve been feeling a quibbling, hair-splitting mood lately. Must be election gaffe season… Anyway, the excellent storyteller Abrahm Lustgarten (you may remember his long series for ProPublica on the Colorado River) has written a new piece for The Atlantic asking if we need “a free-market plan to save the American West from drought.” Lustgarten laments…
John Fleck has written a fascinating summary of his panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference in scenic Las Vegas. He mentions that California, Arizona and Nevada are working on a series of deals to reduce their use of Colorado River water at various elevations of Lake Mead, expanding on the provisions of…
This is going to be a short post simply to ask the above question. It’s obvious to me that policymakers, academics and commentators are in love with the idea of a spot market for water- in other words, an instantaneous market that connects buyers and sellers of water and puts the resource to its “highest…
Outrage is directly correlated with what is visible and easy to understand, not what is actually outrageous. Case in point: the EPA accidentally released 1 million gallons of mine waste into the Animas River (while investigating how to stop mine drainage, no less), turning the river sludgy and bright orange. The response: HEADS MUST ROLL!…
I didn’t set out to do this when I started this blog, or when I started my research into the future of water and society in the American West, but I seem to have brought upon myself a debate with the field of water economics. Water economists like market-derived solutions to our water problems, a…
A film is only as good as the reasons for making it. -David Mackenzie When I was in a fraternity (well, I still am in the fraternity, but you know what I mean) we were often told, nay commanded, to rush new freshmen into our organization through what the national-level suits called values-based recruitment. This…
I’m a TA for a class on environment and the media this semester, and I’ve been thinking a lot about our discourse around water issues and how it affects people’s perceptions of complex problems. Nowhere have I seen the simplification and outrage that is prevalent in our treatment of environmental issues more than with the…
The historic drought in California has brought much welcome attention to the problems of water allocation in the American West. I can’t even count the number of articles explaining the “wasteful” water use by California’s almond and alfalfa farmers, or the ones laying out a better way forward. Two days ago, an international affairs fellow…
Today I want to take you along on a journey. It’s one I took a few weekends ago. We’re going to not necessarily the most glamorous place. In fact I know it’s not the most glamorous place. We’re going to Southeastern Colorado, the lower Arkansas Valley. We’re going to two places primarily- Ordway and Rocky…
This is the fifth and final part in a series presenting my research into the impacts of agricultural-to-municipal water transfers (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). In this post, I present some policy options for addressing the substantial burdens of water transfers that go too far or create cures worse than the disease.…
I just wanted to share this great diagram that CWCB Director James Eklund (@EklundCWCB) presented at the Sustaining Colorado Watersheds Conference this year. I will officially retire the venerable Snake Diagram from this website in favor of this one, which shows variability between typical wet and dry years in each river. We need a name…
This is the fourth part (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) in a series sharing my year-long research into agriculture-to-municipal (AMI) water transfers from scientific, ethical, and practical perspectives. In this section, I explore policy options- some well used, some less so- to mitigate the undesirable effects of AMI transfers on third parties while preserving…
Just something funny I noticed yesterday- both major party gubernatorial candidates spoke to the meeting of the Colorado Water Congress in Aspen this week. Here are two stories from Aspen Journalism: Governor thinks new major dam project “unlikely” Beauprez calls for new water storage projects The Water Congress is the main lobby for entrenched…
Parting the Waters 