A few water conservation ideas

I have received a couple of emails recently from people wanting to publicize their water conservation info.  One is about some simple ways to conserve water during droughts.
When I first saw the url I thought it said Connecticut Utilities and thought to myself, "well they certainly don't have to worry about drought right now."  But it has nothing to do with that soggy New England state.
The next one is from bestcollegesonline.com and presents a list of ways that different colleges are implementing water conserving projects.  Looks like some pretty progressive water conservation is happening on college campuses.

Recent Recognition

You may have noticed I have a new gadget along the right margin.  I was notified last month by someone from Seametrics.com that I was on their list of Top 25 Water Conservation blogs.  I of course promptly added the link on the side but failed to acknowledge the honor in any way.  Noticing who some of the other blogs on the list were I was humbled and felt quite honored to be included.  So this is a shout-out to all those other blogs on the list and to the good folks at Seametrics for including me.

Assorted Property Rights for Sale

For some reason I was searching through a list of books on water marketing on Amazon the other day and an advertisement on the bottom of the page caught my eye.  It offered a forum for buying and selling water rights and listed a website: http://georights.com/.

So I clicked through to take a look.  Seems they offer just about every sort of interest in land there could be: easements, mineral rights, hunting/fishing rights, etc.  It must be fairly new because they are offering free sign-ups to list and bid on properties in order to build their traffic.

So I checked out their listing of water rights for sale.  Not real extensive at this point, but pretty good geographic diversity for what is there.

I'm kind of curious if anyone out there has any experience with this outfit or knows of the people behind it.  Anyone .... Bueller?  Chris Corbin?

Training in Urban Stream Restoration

Watershed Management Group (WMG)* is planning a 3-day hands on short course in urban stream restoration this fall in Tucson.  If you or anyone you know might have an interest in this the info is below:

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Technical Training in Urban Stream Restoration with Watershed Management Group, October 6-8, 2011, in Tucson, AZ

Apply by August 1 for Reduced Course Fee!

Join Watershed Management Group (WMG) for a 3-day, hands-on course in Stream Restoration through the Watershed Technical Trainings program.  This course will provide participants with a basic understanding of how desert streams and arroyos function, how they change over time, and the human influence on them, both positive and negative.  Based on this foundation, students will participate in hands-on sessions in site assessment, design, and implementation of small-scale restoration features.  Emphasis will be placed on urban wash restoration approaches and practices from backyard to larger drainage scales.

The course curriculum includes:

·  Classroom lectures

·  Site assessment, surveying, design, and planning sessions

·  Hands-on restoration workshops

·  Tour of local restoration sites

Apply early for the reduced registration fee by August 1, 2011; application deadline for the regular registration fee is September 1, 2011.  To view the full course announcement and download an application, visit WMG's Watershed Technical Training webpage.  For more information, please contact Tory Syracuse at tsyracuse@watershedmg.org or 520-396-3266.

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* While I am a board member with WMG I derive no financial benefit from any of the work they do, only the satisfaction of seeing them be successful.

Sweet, wonderful rain!

The monsoon arrived in So. Arizona on schedule over the 4th of July weekend.  We received more rain at my house during the past week than we had received during the previous 7 months - almost 1.5 inches.  See how much fell in your neighborhood at www.rainlog.org.

Trying to re-discover my focus

I've had a number of things swirling in my brain for the last few months (being shoved out of the way several times by exogenous factors) but have been waiting to find some sort of motivation or focus to help them coalesce into a cogent written form.  In the meantime, I'll just take the route of some of my fellow water-bloggers and shoot out some quick updates.

Many of the readers of this blog probably already know this but for any who don't, David Zetland, of Aguanomics, recently released his first book - self-published no less - called "The End of Abundance: Economic Solutions to Water Scarcity."  David's a very bright guy and I'm sure his book includes some outstanding insight into water allocation problems, including actual solutions, and the dry wit that he is known for.  Should be an excellent read and I'm hoping to get a copy for myself before my vacation in August. 

But for the moment I'm working through Jamie Workman's recent book, "Heart of Dryness," about the struggles of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert and how the indigenous wisdom of drought-adapted societies can help modern humanity cope with coming water shortages.  I'm a few chapters in right now and it's a very compelling narrative Jamie presents.  Of particular interest to me are the similarities I see between the Bushmen - their interactions with outsiders, struggles to maintain their traditional way of life, and the failure of those outsiders to learn important lessons from ancient cultures - and some of the traditional Native American cultures of the Southwest.  I had the opportunity to meet Jamie in Tucson a few months back and really enjoyed talking about our mutual passion for changing existing paradigms in water management to deal with scarcity.

A few things I'm hoping to compose some thoughts on in the near future:

• Response within the Arizona water management community to the CAP proposal for allocating new water supplies by a market-clearing auction.  This was a novel and interesting proposal that was given a less-than-warm reception when released almost 9 months ago. 
• The recent US Supreme Court opinion in Montana v. Wyoming that has important implications for the significance of return flows in interstate river compacts.
• The prospects for future Indian water rights settlements in Arizona - essentially, not especially good right now.

In memoriam, Steve Brooks, 1959-2011

My brother Steve passed away recently, losing his battle with cancer.  Steve was both my inspiration and my nemesis at various points in my life.  He was the reason I went to school to become a hydrologist (he was already in the masters program at University of Arizona when I entered to pursue my BS).  I followed him into consulting in Arizona, where I was forever known as "Steve's younger brother" within much of the local hydrology community.  At times I think I may have left consulting to go to law school as a concession that I would never be as good a hydrogeologist as he was.  But the reality is, he had things he was really good at - computer modeling and theory - and I had things I was very good at - field hydrogeology and policy.  In the end I came to the understanding that he pushed me at times to make myself better at what I did (which I often resented), but ultimately I would not be where I am today without his influence in my life.  I am a better person both professionally and personally because he took the time to care about me and where I was going with my life.  I owe him a huge debt of gratitude that I was never very good at expressing.  I hope he occasionally looks down on me and smiles at my accomplishments.