Unsettled Waters: A blog on water rights in the American West

As we approach (just) the end of 2012, I wanted to make sure that several water-related stories circulating in parts of New Mexico stay vivid and don't fall out of circulation. As usual I've drawn heavily from La Jicarita . None of this is "news" to the people who have posted, shared, or spread these stories - it's only a way to reflect a bit on the links between them. Those links aren't always obvious. I'll start with what seems increasingly "natural" to the water wonks and local water experts in our region of the Southwest, drought . As detailed by Kay Matthews on the newly-revitalized La Jicarita webazine, Placitas, on the NE side of Albuquerque, is just one small village dealing with the at least two-year drought of 2011-12. After last winter's La Nina low snow non-events in the Southwest, the 2012 winter precipitation season is off to a very slow start. Things look grim , with people actually praying for snow, as opposed to expecting ...

Hello folks, the Texas Wesleyan Journal of Real Property Law asked me to post some information here about an upcoming water law symposium. Read on, below, for more information. I'll be back within the week to update the blog, once my block 2 teaching has wrapped up here at Colorado College. The Journal is hosting a water law symposium on Friday, Nov. 9, 2012 at Texas Wesleyan School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas . F or more information about our symposium, pleas e visit http://bit.ly/ TWUWaterLaw .  

This post has much to do with an upcoming visitor to the Colorado College. In September, our so-called block 1 at the college, we'll have William (Bill) deBuys on campus, to discuss his latest book " A Great Aridness " (2011, Oxford U Press). The point of the book, as I read it and re-read it this summer, is to survey how different parts of the larger region we call the Southwest will cope under forecasted (or actually-occurring) climate changes. Surface water, forest fires, endangered species, are all grist for the mill in A Great Aridness, as Bill travels parts of the Southwest and talks to scientists working closely on these topics. The relevance in the first two classes I'll teach this year, Political Ecology of the Southwest (block 1), and Introduction to Global Climate Change (block 2), is fairly obvious. The first block, the political ecology class, is really a thematically-rotating focused seminar on various regional issues. Apart from a core text on polit...

Unruly Waters is the new address, and name, for this blog. The old "donchuyspad" was just a little too creepy for a blog on water, adjudication, climate issues. New content incoming! Stay tuned...thanks for your patience. Here's some eye candy in the meantime... Photo : June 2012 pulse of the Santa Fe River, flowing once more (at least that week it was), all an experiment to create some version of a 'living river' in a city that has over-taxed this small watershed.

As a colleague and I prepare to launch block 6 (Feb 20 th start date) with our Southwest Studies 272 ( Nature, Region, and Society of the Southwest ) methods course, I am finalizing the details of our field excursion into New Mexico. Our theme will be on the “cultures of water in the Southwest.” And while sticking to New Mexico may not show all the dimensions to the theme, it certainly will cover most contemporary concerns related to water: cultural perceptions of water, water use, water rights, and also the rights of ecosystems and species. So what we have planned is visits, discussions with local and regional experts on the various cultures represented in the state. We have assigned Sylvia Rodriguez's book on Acequias , a volume largely focused on the Taos Valley experience (see the map) , as a way to illustrate the complexity surrounding water use, ritual, and place in northern New Mexico. We'll be with her, in the flesh, on March 6, as a way for the students to 'me...