• Bluffing a Call, Calling the Bluff

    
Romancing the River: Bluffing a Call, Calling the Bluff

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    Breaking news! The Lower Colorado River Basin is threatening the Upper Basin with a ‘Compact Call’ if it does not agree to share some major cuts in river use! Well, actually the news broke a week ago – and now there’s more news: just as I was wrapping this analysis of the ‘Call’ up yesterday,…

  • Romancing the River: Forging on in the Era of Fear and Loathing

    Romancing the River: Forging on in the Era of Fear and Loathing

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    Voz del pasado The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about ‘new politics’ and ‘honesty in government,’ is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the…

  • Vote Dammit

    Romancing the River: The Existential Election – Again

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    I would be remiss in whatever responsibility I feel to the Colorado River if I did not remind you of the implications of the coming election for the river and our future with it. I don’t say ‘the future of the river’: the river will always be here in some form or another, but we…

  • Romancing the River: The Headwaters Challenge 2 East River valley

    Romancing the River: The Headwaters Challenge 2

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    In the last two posts here (one of which you got twice, my apology), I’ve been trying to ‘revision’ the Colorado River as the classic desert river that it is. All rivers are composed of runoff – water from precipitation that did not soak into the ground, collecting in streams that ‘run off’ to the…

  • Romancing the River: The Headwaters Challenge

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    An Apology: Our service that sends these posts hs malfunctioned; this one sat in limbo for the past two weeks. I hope we have things back to where we can again get it to you every 3-4 weeks.  – George In the last post here, with the Colorado River’s Upper and Lower Basins in stalemate…

  • Romancing the River: The Desert River

    Romancing the River: The Desert River

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    In the last post, I suggested that the Colorado River Compact with its ‘temporary equitable division’ into two basins could now be considered irrelevant (or worse, obstructive) because we have finally effectively accomplished, over the past century, the goal that brought the seven-state Compact commission together in 1922, but which they were unable to achieve…

  • Romancing the River - No 50

    Romancing the River: Back to Basics?

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    Note in passing: this is the 50th post on this ‘weblog’ (a meaningful number to a ten-digit species). I am grateful to those who continue to open and even read these posts. I am obviously writing as much for my own edification and clarification as for yours, in the spirit of British writer E.M. Forster,…

  • Romancing the River: Win-winning the West and our Unimaginable Future

    Romancing the River: Win-winning the West and our Unimaginable Future

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    Way too much is happening in the world today, beyond the Colorado River. An Armageddon is shaping up in the mideastern Cradle of Too Many Civilizations that makes Colorado River problems look like sandlot scuffles; we’re in a long slog toward an election in the Untied (sic) States that would not even be close in…

  • Romancing the River: Cowboys and Indians

    Romancing the River: Cowboys and Indians

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    The maze design above is the Great Seal of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, inhabiting a relatively small First People Reservation (53,600 acres) in Arizona at the confluence of the Salt and Gila Rivers. The Gila River system drains most of the state of Arizona – what there is to drain in the subtropical…

  • Romancing the River: To Halve and Have Not

    Romancing the River: To Halve and Have Not

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    In my last post, I reported that the water mavens of both the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basins had each presented the Bureau of Reclamation with plans for managing the river after 2026, when the current, amended ‘Interim Guidelines’ expire. The Interim Guidelines had been implemented in 2007, remember, when it was obvious that…

  • Romancing the River: Running the Real River

    Romancing the River: Running the Real River

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    I really like the AI image above, created by a couple creatives at American Whitewater, Scott Harding and Kestrel Kunz. for a presentation at the Colorado River Water Users Association convention in January. It shows ‘the people who run the river’ running the river. But if you have ever been in that whitewater situation, you…

  • Romancing the River: The Appropriation Doctrine – and Its Appropriation

    Romancing the River: The Appropriation Doctrine – and Its Appropriation

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    ‘The single biggest roadblock to solving the problem of stabilizing the river is the priority system.’ – Tom Buschatzke, Director of Arizona’s 
 Department of Water Resource   Last post, I laid out some reasons why the water mavens now engaged in mapping out Colorado River management strategies beyond 2026 – the year ‘interim’ management…

  • Romancing the River: Prior Appropriation and Present Priorities

    Romancing the River: Prior Appropriation and Present Priorities

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    ‘Fiddling while Rome burns’ – that’s what the Roman emperor Nero is remembered for, practicing on his fiddle while mobs tore up the city. In Ortega’s memorable phrase: responding to the lack of bread by burning down the bakery. But – ‘fiddling while Rome burns’: I often feel like that’s my life these days. We…