Colorado River

Why Can’t We All Get Along On The Colorado River?

Maybe It Is Time For the Interior Secretary To Settle The Issue — And For Newspapers To Get Rid Of Op-Eds

Well, this was intriguing. An op-ed from ran with this evocative title: California and its neighbors are at an impasse over the Colorado River. Here’s a way forward. Its author was Eric Kuhn, a former general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and a co-author of “Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science …

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What Is Water Use, Anyway?

We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us

We all know the story, and the percentages:  of water used by human beings in California (i.e. not going to environmental uses), agriculture uses a whopping 80%. So it makes little sense to call on urban users to conserve, so the story goes, until ag goes first. Certainly nonprofits like Food and Water Watch think …

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Climate Rides the Omnibus

An image of the U.S. Capitol Building in the evening.

The year-end law gives a boost to climate-related spending

The omnibus spending bill is by no means a “climate law.”  Because it spans the entire government, though, it has many provisions relating to climate change. They aren’t dramatic step forward. But the fact that they can pass as part of a bipartisan spending law is a sign of how climate change is slowly becoming …

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Hot Spots

Climate change isn’t uniform. Some parts of the U.S. are seeing conditions that won’t hit elsewhere for decades.

Friday’s Washington Post had a fascinating article about climate change hotspots within the United States.  The largest one was on the Western Slope of the Rockies, which has already seen 2 °C of warming.  The story is a reminder that the impacts of climate change will be global and yet also very much local. Before …

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Norris C. Hundley, Jr., 1935-2013

Environmental scholarship has lost a real giant: Norris Cecil Hundley Jr., a former resident of Pacific Palisades, passed away peacefully on April 28. He was 77.  Born to Norris and Helen Hundley on October 26, 1935 in Houston, Texas, Norris is survived by six younger siblings… Norris graduated from Whittier College in 1958. After receiving his Ph.D. …

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The Future of the Colorado

The Bureau of Reclamation has issued an important new report on the future of the Colorado River.  The Colorado supplies drinking water to 40 million people and irrigation water to nearly 5.5 million acres of land. The report projects decreases in supply over the next fifty years, including a 9% decrease in average flow and a …

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What are the Top 10 Natural Resources Stories?

Lots of folks in legal academia are familiar with Foundation Press’ popular Law Stories series; around here on Legal Planet, we are particularly familiar with Environmental Law Stories (pictured right), edited by Richard Lazarus and Oliver Houck, to which Dan and Holly contributed a chapter. It’s a very useful book, and I’m a fan.  But …

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More accusations of politics trumping science and law at Interior

The Washington Post reports that officials at the Department of Interior ignored “key scientific findings” and the views of National Park Service officials “when they limited water flows in the Grand Canyon to optimize generation of electric power there, risking damage to the ecology of the spectacular national landmark.”  The Post story, written by Juliet …

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