unlimited it's the water, stupid

Started by Woolly Bugger, March 04, 2019, 11:37:47 AM

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Woolly Bugger



The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the Interior Dept's implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act earlier this month, and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) questioned Deputy Secretary of the Interior, Tommy Beaudreau, about solutions to drought impacts on the Colorado River.
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

Thousands Will Live Here One Day (as Long as They Can Find Water)
In the increasingly dry Southwest, drought and climate change pose a challenge for developers, who need to find creative ways to provide water supply to new communities.

Surrounded by miles of creosote and ocotillo in the Sonoran Desert, state officials and business leaders gathered in October against the backdrop of the ragged peaks of the White Tank Mountains to applaud a plan to turn 37,000 acres of arid land west of Phoenix into the largest planned community ever proposed in Arizona.

The development, Teravalis, is expected to have 100,000 homes and 55 million square feet of commercial space. But to make it happen, the project's developer, the Howard Hughes Corporation, will need to gain access to enough water for its projected 300,000 residents and 450,000 workers.

Teravalis is seen by local and state leaders as a crowning achievement in a booming real estate market, but it also represents the intensifying challenge in Arizona and other fast-growing Southwestern states: to build huge mixed-use projects in an era of water scarcity.

"You can't grow and grow on these far-flung lands and put industries anywhere you want," said Kathleen Ferris, former director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and a senior research fellow at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. "You have to be smarter about where and how we grow."

Read the article
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

#242
The Times podcast: Colorado River in Crisis, Part 1: A Dying River

https://www.latimes.com/podcasts/story/2023-01-06/the-times-podcast-crisis-on-the-colorado-ep-1-a-dying-river




People have been warning about the breakdown of the Colorado River for decades. It's now at a tipping point. Today, we kick off our six-part special on this vital source of water for the American Southwest.
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

#244
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

Arizona city cuts off a neighborhood's water supply amid drought


SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The survival — or at least the basic sustenance — of hundreds in a desert community amid the horse ranches and golf courses outside Phoenix now rests on a 54-year-old man with a plastic bucket of quarters.
John Hornewer picked up a quarter and put it in the slot. The lone water hose at a remote public filling station sputtered to life and splashed 73 gallons into the steel tank of Hornewer's water hauling truck. After two minutes, it stopped. Hornewer, one of two main suppliers responsible for delivering water to a community of more than 2,000 homes known as Rio Verde Foothills, fished out another quarter.
"It so shouldn't be like this," Hornewer said.
Some living here amid the cactus and creosote bushes see themselves as the first domino to fall as the Colorado River tips further into crisis. On Jan. 1, the city of Scottsdale, which gets the majority of its water from the Colorado River, cut off Rio Verde Foothills from the municipal water supply that it has relied on for decades. The result is a disorienting and frightening lack of certainty about how residents will find enough water as their tanks run down in coming weeks, with a bitter political feud impacting possible solutions


https://wapo.st/3QJFXVu
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

How to Save the Colorado River? Use Less Water
Audubon submits comments to Bureau of Reclamation as they develop new operating rules.

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The massive dams on the Colorado River were supposed to protect us.

At the dedication of Hoover Dam, the colossus just outside of Las Vegas created Lake Mead, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt celebrated "its contribution to the health and comfort of the people of America who live in the Southwest." The Glen Canyon Dam was built in the 1960's into the red rocks of Glen Canyon to form Lake Powell. Floyd Dominy, the Reclamation Commissioner who presided over its construction extolled that "you wouldn't have anywhere near the number of people living comfortably in the West if you hadn't developed the projects, if you hadn't managed the water."

Today, the water stored behind them is so diminished that the federal government has warned of "system collapse." The two reservoirs are dangerously close to dead pool, the point at which the water level sinks below the dams' intakes. At risk are the 40 million people who rely on the Colorado River water supply and a substantial share of the U.S. agricultural economy, not to mention the hundreds of bird species and every other living thing that depends on the basin's rivers as habitat.

How did this happen? The river is legally overallocated, the basin is experiencing extended drought conditions, and climate warming is exacerbating the drought. Perhaps most significantly, consumptive water uses in the past 20 years have exceeded supply. Rather than reducing water uses a little bit year over year, those who control the river (water users, state and federal agencies) largely sustained consumptive uses by draining those reservoirs. Now that they are nearly emptied, that strategy won't work anymore, and the region is in for a rough transition.

https://www.audubon.org/news/how-save-colorado-river-use-less-water

Downloadable Resources
https://media.audubon.org/file-attachments/article/audubon_coriverguidelinesseiscomment_12_22.pdf
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

Leaving Lake Mead: Water for California, Arizona a drain on stressed supply

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Southern Nevada residents are laser-focused on Lake Mead as worries over water supplies grow. And rightfully so — that's the source of almost all of the Las Vegas valley's water.

But as Lake Mead shrinks even more over the next two years, a reality will come clearly into focus: There's more demand for the water flowing out of Hoover Dam than there is for the water that stays in Lake Mead.

Lake Mead forecast to drop nearly 20 feet by September while other reservoirs rise
Water supplies for California and Arizona are pulled out of the Colorado River as it flows out of Lake Havasu. Both states have rights to amounts of water that dwarf Nevada's allocation.

Biggest users
Under the Colorado River Compact, California gets 4.4 million acre-feet from the river. Drought restrictions that just went into place cut Arizona's allocation to 2.2 million acre-feet — a 21% cut from the 2.8 million acre-feet under the terms of the compact. Nevada gets 275,000 acre-feet this year — a reduction of 25,000 acre-feet because of the drought.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/leaving-lake-mead-water-for-california-arizona-a-drain-on-stressed-supply/ar-AA16CRHI?ocid=weather-verthp-feeds
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Onslow

Could be worse. Not shabby



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Woolly Bugger

As the Colorado River Shrinks, Washington Prepares to Spread the Pain

The seven states that rely on the river for water are not expected to reach a deal on cuts. It appears the Biden administration will have to impose reductions.


The seven states that rely on water from the shrinking Colorado River are unlikely to agree to voluntarily make deep reductions in their water use, negotiators say, which would force the federal government to impose cuts for the first time in the water supply for 40 million Americans.

The Interior Department had asked the states to voluntarily come up with a plan by Jan. 31 to collectively cut the amount of water they draw from the Colorado. The demand for those cuts, on a scale without parallel in American history, was prompted by precipitous declines in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which provide water and electricity for Arizona, Nevada and Southern California. Drought, climate change and population growth have caused water levels in the lakes to plummet.

Full NYT article
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Woolly Bugger

How Las Vegas declared war on thirsty grass and set an example for the desert Southwest

Fountains still shimmer opulently at casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, but lush carpets of grass are gradually disappearing along the streets of Sin City.
Despite its reputation for excess, the Mojave Desert metropolis has been factoring climate change into its water plans for years, declaring war on thirsty lawns, patrolling the streets for water wasters and preparing for worst-case scenarios on the Colorado River, which supplies 90% of the area's water.

Las Vegas has emerged as a leader in water conservation, and some of its initiatives have spread to other cities and states that rely on the shrinking river. Its drive to get rid of grass in particular could reshape the look of landscapes in public and private spaces throughout the Southwest.

So how did Las Vegas become a water-saving model to emulate? It began with an initial phase of the Colorado River crisis two decades ago.

Lake Mead had been nearly full and lapping at the spillway gates of Hoover Dam in early 2000. Then extreme drought and heavy water use sent the reservoir into a rapid decline.

In 2002, as the reservoir level dropped, the Southern Nevada Water Authority used more than its allocation of Colorado River water. At that point, the agency's leaders decided to pivot quickly toward conservation.

They focused on promoting cash rebates to help customers rip out lawns and put in landscaping with desert plants.
In 2003, the Las Vegas area's consumption of Colorado River water shrank more than 16%. Those conservation gains continued as the area's water suppliers strengthened their rules, targeting grass.

In 2004, frontyard lawns were prohibited for new subdivisions. Golf courses were given water budgets. The water authority adopted seasonal watering restrictions.

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In 2004, frontyard lawns were prohibited for new subdivisions in the Las Vegas area. Above, the suburban community of Mountain's Edge. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-01-29/colorado-river-in-crisis-cracking-down-on-grass


Note: That subdivision looks like hell on earth to me! jis say'in
ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!