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Romancing the River: Thinking Like a River
Greetings in 2024, which promises to be an interesting year, along the Colorado River and beyond it too. May we come out of it affirmed nationally in our commitment to democratic governance, and improved in our execution of it on our river. Back in the earlier part of the last century, the great conservationist and…
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Romancing the River: Sun and Water
I was planning for this post to be tip-toeing into a conversation about the prior appropriation doctrine, a conversation which we badly need to have throughout the interior West, but which will likely be vigorously, even violently, opposed by those holding senior water rights in every western watershed. But instead of that – I’ve been…
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Romancing the River: What Am I Talking About?
Romancing the River – I am aware, as you are probably aware, that when I title these posts ‘Romancing the River,’ I am talking about the life work of the kinds of people who do not usually think of themselves as ‘romantics,’ or of their water-related work as ‘romancing the river.’ Engineers, lawyers, politicians, managers,…
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Romancing the River We’ve Created
We are no longer developing the resource; We are learning how to share the developed resources. – The Late Justice Greg Hobbs Colorado Supreme Court The graph above may look familiar; I used it in a post last summer (June 27, ‘Beyond 2026’). It illuminates a study by three ‘Colorado River elders’: hydrologist Jack…
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First Peoples 5: Civilized enough to get some water
We’re seeing not just being at the table, but actually having an influence on the agenda. We’re looking at the next step – because you can have a seat at the table, but not be taken seriously. And tribes, especially now in regards to water, we have to be taken seriously. – Stephen Roe Lewis,…
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First Peoples 4: Getting Civilized – DIY
To summarize the last three posts on this site – we have been looking at the generally ambiguous relationships between the United States federal government, the seven not-very-united states in the Colorado River region, and 30 recognized First People nations who inhabit the Colorado River Basin. The 30 nations, still primarily using Stone Age technology,…
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First Peoples 3: States, Feds and the First People Go Fishing
I hope you’ll excuse my irreverence in showing the image above. If you haven’t noticed, ‘what’s real’ versus what we wish were real is what a lot of our discourse is about these days, and not just along the Colorado River. Denial is more than just a river in Egypt. But moving on – I…
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The First People, Part 2: The Reservations
The last post here began an exploration of tribal issues in the Colorado River region, where 30 ‘First People’ nations have been put on reservations throughout the region. We looked at some of the precolumbian history in the Southwest, to emphasize the human diversity that existed in the region when European peoples invaded the continent…
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Romancing the River: The First Peoples, Part 1
We’re seeing not just being at the table, but actually having an influence on the agenda. We’re looking at the next step – because you can have a seat at the table, but not be taken seriously. And tribes, especially now in regards to water, we have to be taken seriously. – Stephen Roe Lewis,…
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Beyond 2026: Governance for the Colorado River in the Anthropocene
The graph above is from a study released a couple weeks ago, mid-June, on ‘The Colorado River Water Crisis: Its Origin and the Future,’ authored by two elders of Colorado River affairs: Dr. John Schmidt, river scientist at Utah State University, and Eric Kuhn, longtime manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, now retired;…
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Thoughts on the Lower Colorado River Basin Water Deal
A short post, to catch up on Colorado River current events. As you probably know, if you haven’t been living in a media-free cave, the three Colorado River states below the canyon region have proposed another alternative plan for saving the River’s reservoir system. Their proposal, for answering the Interior Department’s call for cuts of…
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Romancing the River: Glen Canyon Dam and Another America
We’re in a bit of a holding pattern along the Colorado River today, at least in the Upper Basin: on the one hand, waiting for the Bureau of Reclamation to weigh the options for big cuts in Lower Basin use; and on the other hand, seeing the Lower Basin states trying to come up with…
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Romancing the River: Is Glen Canyon Dam an ‘Antique’?
Yes, that diagram again. I was chastised by readers last week for using it – partly for the ‘Antique’ in the diagram’s title, but also for not adequately explaining what the diagram shows. I apologize for the latter. These posts tend to run long and demand a lot more of readers than the 15-second attention…