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How Much Water is in the Snow in the Mountains? NASA and the California Department of Water Resources are collaborating on a project to provide a near real-time assessment of mountain snowpack. The three-year pilot study of watersheds in California and Colorado began last month. The lasers and spectrometers on the Airborne Snow Observatory, carried [...]
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The most severe drought in 117 years of recordkeeping on the Great Plains came quickly, without warning, and without any dominant cause, according to an analysis by university and government scientists. It was largely not a result of climate change, they claim, and it was not the result of the drought conditions in Texas from [...]
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Climate change and population growth will force the basin to add new supplies, harness demand, and change operational agreements, officials say.
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Three years into its agency-wide water efficiency and conservation program, the Interior Department has given itself a gold star and a pat on the back in an assessment report released last week. Ordered by Congress and shaped by Secretary Ken Salazar, the WaterSMART program is on track to meet its top goal of conserving 730,000 [...]
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Congress adjourned until after the November elections, leaving quite a bit of work on the table for a short lame-duck session. In addition to anticipated debates about fiscal policy, there are a few water-related bills that might be considered at year’s end. In a hearing last week, Senate committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she [...]
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The House Appropriations Committee passed a spending bill for the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service and 20 related agencies that cut total spending by 4 percent, and by 6 percent compared to the president’s request. The EPA shoulders most of the pain, seeing its budget cut $1.4 billion, [...]
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that a pollution permit, called a NPDES permit in the lingo, will not be necessary for stormwater coming from logging roads. The agency will continue to study the best way to reduce sediment runoff from what it calls “a relatively small subset” of roads that affect stream quality. Powder [...]
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The president throws more clean-energy money at the Energy Department, while cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget come at the expense of water and sewer infrastructure.
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A few choice items have already trickled out or were set in deals made months ago, but today President Barack Obama will submit his fiscal year 2013 budget to Congress. We’ll have all the water details here, once the complete document lands. Afterward, the budget debate moves to the east end of the National Mall [...]
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The falling price of photovoltaic panels and public concerns about aquifers and rivers in the western United States are boosting solar energy technologies that save water.
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Solar Review The deadline for submitting public comments on the Bureau of Land Management’s broad environmental review of solar energy development in six western U.S. states is Friday. The review will result in changes to the agency’s resource management plans, allowing it to concentrate solar energy projects on the most suitable parcels of land. Comments [...]
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Proper Property Rights A United Nations committee working to establish guidelines for land rights has negotiated and agreed to about 70 percent of the items on its working list, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The U.S. government is chairing the committee, which is seeking to bring some order to what critics call [...]
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In Washington Last week the federal government began tearing down two dams on Washington state’s Elwha River. The $350 million project is the world’s largest dam-removal and river-restoration. The National Park Service is maintaining a website with daily photos monitoring the project’s progress. In Oregon and California The Department of the Interior released several peer-reviewed [...]
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Taking the EPA’s Authority Away A House committee approved a bill that would gut much of the EPA’s power to enforce clean water standards. The Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act, approved by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, would transfer regulatory power over water, wetlands and mountaintop mining to the states, Greenwire reports. The House leadership [...]
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The interim report is the first step in a two-year evaluation of the Colorado River Basin.
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US Forest Service Maps its Waters For the past few years, through the marbled halls of government and the glass towers of multi-lateral development agencies, a conservationist buzz phrase has resonated: ecosystem services. The term designates the things nature does—like scrub the air and pollinate flowers—that benefit humans. For forests, one of the key functions [...]
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Tribal Water Rights Owing to the cut-at-all-costs political fervor in Washington, an $800 million water rights settlement between the federal government and American Indian tribes in the Southwest is unraveling, the Arizona Daily Sun reports. Arizona Republican Senator John Kyl has asked negotiators for the more than 30 participating parties to lower the cost of [...]
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Central Utah Project The government is looking to lease. The Department of the Interior is signing away “power privilege”—the right for a non-federal entity to use a federal project to generate electricity. The federal project in this case is the Spanish Fork Flow Control Structures, part of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Central Utah Project. According [...]
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The President’s Water Plan The Obama Administration announced a clean water strategy. Among the recommendations is a proposal to expand the number of rivers and streams that fall under the regulatory domain of the Clean Water Act. There is a 60-day public comment period. Comments can be emailed to owdocket@epa.gov, with “EPA-HQ-OW-2011-0409″ in the subject [...]
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