Follow the Water

Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument

The 45th president of the United States Department of the Interior has just short listed the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument for decommissioning.  It is on the list of natural treasures under review. Removing it from National Monument status would remove this region to toxic uranium mining. The uranium mining lease was actually entertained first by the State Department under the direction of Hillary Clinton, and was to be let to a consortium which included Russia.

The beauty of this land

There are so very many reasons to protest this move by our politicians , The awesome beauty is just a small fraction of those. And if your concept of what a uranium mine looks like is a shaft into the ground with all the workings hidden from view let me say you are wrong as the picture below indicates. And it does not go away when the mine is closed. Even the waste hauled out of the mine is radioactive and must be constantly washed with water to keep it cool. Water which goes into the aquifers below all western lands. It seeps through canyon walls and the sandstone and goes into the precious few rivers which cross the land.

Uranium mine in New Mexico

I want to protest this move by the despot in office currently because of the water. As I have stated in this blog platform before the next war will be over water. It is a resource we cannot live without. And while there may be alternate sources of energy there is no alternative to water. Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument is in the Colorado River watershed. What happens there drains into the biggest river in the southwest.

The water from the Colorado River goes into Lake Meade, a major water recreation area, and is used by Colorado for irrigation of its crops. Phoenix has built a canal to siphon some of this precious resource to mist its sidewalks. Ultimately it goes to the Gulf of Baja. We have a treaty with the Mexican government about the amount and quality of the water it receives from us via this international river.

Colorado River as seen from the cliffs of the monument

Tailings from uranium mines retain 85% of the radioactivity of the ores which are mined. And uranium can have a half-life of 5,730 years. So it is possible, if this mine is allowed, that your strawberries will glow in the dark for millenniums. 

Take another look at the map beginning this article. The blue line at the bottom edge is the Colorado River. And canyons and streams in the monument drain into it. Those are the visible parts of the watershed. The west also has the below ground parts of the watershed. 

This is about so much more than beautiful scenery or, if you will, just more red rock. This is about the water. Please protest this action by the Department of the Interior.

Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240

202-208-3100

feedback@ios.doi.gov

About Time

In 2006 my sister and I booked a house boat on Lake Powell for eight days. We did this because at the time the lake created by the much protested Glen Canyon Dam was 130 below optimal level. And it had been that low for long enough that the "bathtub ring" has largely washed off. It was as close to a photographer's dream as it would get since the dam was built. Unless of course the dam was removed.

Water levels had plummeted in 2005 and the Bureau of Reclamation reported the reservoir could not sustain itself if current levels of out pour were continued. The word drought was not even whispered in those days, but a decline in the rainfall from the 1960's when the dam was designed and built had substantially declined. The Glen Canyon Dam was a farce within four decades of its construction.

When the dam was built it was supposedly to supply water and power to California. With somewhat vague promises of ending the spring flooding and providing water and power to the Ute and Navajo reservations. Its construction spawned the Sierra Club and was the inspiration for the book Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. I first became aware of the dam and its effect on the west in the 1970's when I rafted the Colorado River for the first time and the guides talked of Sunday water or Monday water as a determinate of the level of water in the river and the difficulty of rapids. Release of water from Lake Powell was determined by the need for electricity in Los Angeles.

The Utes and the Navajos never received the promised benefits of the great white wall of concrete. No water and no electricity. And as almost all the spring flooding are in tributaries below the dam it didn't do a lot for that either. The great gods of government wanted three more dams between Glen Canyon and Hoover. And all for electricity in the growing cities of California. Nor was the low my sister and I took advantage of reversed in the following years. In May 2014 Lake Powell was 42% of capacity and whole side canyons once navigable were cut off and dry. Earth Observatory by NASA has an alarming set of satellite photographs of the ever declining Lake Powell and a great write up.

Dams are not about water. They are about power. They are not about conservation. They are about abuse. Los Angeles has never reduced its need for power generated by Glen Canyon Dam even while the four western states which supply its water have cried about the worsening drought. California keeps on its lights and Phoenix still mists its sidewalks with water coming from the Colorado river after passing through Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam. For decades the water taken out to green the deserts of California and Arizona and keep golf courses green, and light all the night up with lights prevented the Colorado reaching the sea. Canals were built to take its water hundreds of miles from its natural river bed.

Now at last Mexico is enforcing the treaty which says they should get some of this precious water that has been wasted. And California is talking conservation of water. REALLY? Now, when there almost no water left all because you wanted to light up office towers all night long? Only of the wasteful practices of Sodom of the west where fields are turning saline from water pumped from diminishing aquifers once filled by the Colorado River system when it was allowed to run free in its own basin instead of being routed in concrete canals.

 The Monkey Wrench Gang was right. Too bad we could not blow it up before it was finished. But the outcry from the building of the Glen Canyon dam did stop the other three planned dams. Though I hear undercurrents of talk that they are back on the drawing board to end the water crisis.

Note to world: You cannot save in dams what does not fall from the sky. And you cannot release water for your lights if there isn't any there.

It isn't nice to waste water

Las Vegas, Nevada is rapidly becoming known as the city of fountains here in the United States. I am not quite sure why a resort in the middle of the desert is going so hog wild for these water features. Especially since they are so short of water in Las Vegas that they pay residents to take up grass on their lawns and plant rocks instead.

The town of Las Vegas is negotiating with other areas in northern Nevada and even other states for water rights. Like Phoenix did they want to build canals to bring water to their fountains, and swimming pools, and golf courses and sidewalk misters. Heaven forbid that people visiting the desert should get hot and dry.

The Bellagio and Caesars Forum, two of the big fountain owners, say that the fountains use recycled water and ergo don't waste this precious resource in a town without it. Evaporation they say is negligible. Which brings me to my little fountain inside my studio in the mountains of New Mexico.

It is under two feet high and does not dance like the water at Bellagio. The water cascades over the edge of the upper pot and into the base where it is pumped back up. I have had it running for less than a week and have resupplied the water twice. About a half gallon each time.

Evaporation is not negligible.  I rather think that the mega resorts in Las Vegas hire the same public relations people as BP uses to underplay their oil "spill."

I am sure that Caesars and Bellagio do not pay undocumented workers to carry buckets of water to replenish their fountains. So the question is whether the water pipe is metered for usage. New Mexico is a desert state and all public water usage is metered even on your own well. So come on let's hear the real figures of how much water is wasted in the desert to make it dance for the tourists?

The inquiring public wants to know. Especially those areas that are being harangued by legal officials to sell their water to a city that desperately needs it supposedly. Oh, and while we are on the subject of evaporation let's ask Phoenix how much it loses in its canal from the Colorado River to its 150 golf courses.

Not Nice to Abuse Mother Nature

This is a picture of the Rhyolite-Cook Bank a major feature of a ghost town a nice day trip from Las Vegas, Nevada. The town of Rhyolite was a gold boom town that as quickly busted for lack of gold. It existed as a town from 1905 to 1920.

Now it seems that its neighbor, Las Vegas, may well bust for lack of water. One of those little fluff pieces that USA Today and Yahoo News are so fond of doing says that Lake Mead, built to supply water to Las Vegas will be totally dry by 2021. Yahoo Green bemoans this tragic event as the death of a vacation spot. I thought it needed a more extensive treatment especially since wasted water in the west is one of my soap boxes. I just happened to have this map of the Colorado River Basin on hand.

The watershed of the Colorado River covers 242,900 square miles, parts of seven US States and two Mexican States. Not only does it fill Lake Mead but any water that Las Vegas does not take out from that reservoir is then channeled out by Phoenix to turn the desert green. Those two Mexican states are lucky if they get anything which has been a major sticking point in water treaties between Mexico and the United States.

The Colorado River is dammed above Lake Mead by the Glen Canyon Dam which forms Lake Powell. California gets a large amount of its electrical power from the generators in the Glen Canyon Dam. Droughts in the Four Corners area and increased electrical usage in Los Angeles has significantly lowered the level of Lake Powell where water is released on demand to turn on the lights.

Speaking of lights back to Las Vegas where the lights are on because of the Hoover Dam and water released from Lake Mead to create electricity for the city of lights. Oh, and fountains. Fountains upon fountains lit up like day by spot lights in all colors in the city that never sleeps. But what Las Vegas doesn't waste Phoenix will.

Las Vegas, fearing the worst, has started trying to buy up water rights north of it. Nothing new there. Denver, Colorado, which has exhausted the South Platte and is on the wrong side of the mountain for Colorado River water and too far north of the Rio Grande watershed, has been trying to buy up water rights from New Mexico for decades. We even passed a law forbidding transfer of rights between basins.

This is not a matter of global warming or not. It is about the fact that we are a very wasteful species and our populations have been allowed to grow unchecked. And we are not geckos that can collect the early morning dew of the desert on our skins.

Making the Desert Cool?

One of the multitude of subjects talked about around the table New Year's eve was water. Clean, drinkable water is going to be a major concern in the United States within the very near future. It is already a serious problem in cities like Las Vegas, Nevada, Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The major problems is nobody that lives there seems to know it.

Phoenix is a town in a desert which gets only 8 inches of rain in a good year and more often just 6 or less. It has, at last count, more than 150 golf courses. Residents like their water features such as outdoor swimming pools and cool misting systems that make the desert heat tolerable. Swimming pools require chillers (not heaters) to remain usable. Clearly with technology we have come a long way from the Bedouin Tents. But should we have?

The nomadic lifestyle of the Bedouins makes sense. It leaves a very small footprint upon the sands. The were light weight loose clothing rather than slaver their skin with sun screens. And they confine their major activities to the cool of the mornings and evenings rather than drill wells deep into the earth to spray precious water to evaporate into the dry desert air. It would not be so bad if Phoenix used only its water to waste on sprinkler and misting systems and water features. But no, they take water from the Colorado river via a huge canal and thereby deprive Mexico of the benefits of being downstream. The water originates in the high snow-capped Rocky Mountains and is trapped in reservoirs like Lake Powell so it can be managed to produce electricity for Los Angeles.

Here in the mountain west we consider that water precious. It is a resource that should be conserved and managed. And yet we watch it be wasted by energy generation companies and pleasure seekers living where they were not meant to live as they do.

New Mexico has fought over water rights it the past. Texas is finding out its huge aquifer is not as exhaustive as once thought. Santa Fe has put a curb on new housing because of the limitations of water. Las Vegas is trying to buy up water from areas north of the Great Basin and approaching the Canadian border to prime its fountains, misters and fill swimming pools. It will not be long before residents of Phoenix and Las Vegas and Tucson fight over the last few drops out of their taps. A deed on property in Phoenix once contained a clause guaranteeing the purchaser at least 100 years of water. Some experts say they cannot now guarantee ten years. And with all the new ways they are "using it" maybe not one.

Anyone want websites for Bedouin tents? You can get a good deal on a slightly used subdivision outside Phoenix. Sorry, no misters or pools possible. The wells went dry.

Oh, and sorry but no golf course either.

Little State, Big State

I have done Red State/Blue State but now I would like to do Big State/Little State. Hillary is making the case repeatedly that while she has gotten fewer states than Obama she has gotten the big states which makes her more electable in the Presidential race. So what about us little states? What about our issues?

They never seem to be covered by any candidate on a national level because they do not have enough electoral punch. So our issues like flooding and the state of the levees on the Mississippi which runs through a bunch of little states is ignored. Or the drought which has plagued the west where I live and its effect on the level of the lakes like Powell and Mead which is used to generate power for power leeches like Los Angeles and Las Vegas. All the states that contribute to that future hydroelectric source are small states. We want a national referendum on water and power but we get out voted by the big states that waste both.

Everyone is talking about Pennsylvania being the bell-weather state at the moment. I don't live in Pennsylvania. It has its issues and I have mine. I want someone to address a few of my issues for a moment. I want gas prices lower so people will travel this summer. As a beautiful small state we depend a lot on tourism. And how about addressing the state of our infrastructure while at it. The winter has done a number on the aging Interstate system. We have three that transverse our state with trucks going from one big state to another big state and incredible speeds (and no doubt on speed).

I also want to keep our water. And what we just must send to Arizona I don't want to see wasted on another single golf course. They only get 6 inches of rain a year so live with that. (Incidentally since McCain is an Arizona senator and never addressed this issue of Phoenix taking water from the Colorado which is a half state away I doubt he is getting my vote.) And I want all the other states to keep their low-level nuclear waste. Us little states will no longer be a dumping ground. You want nuclear energy so you can keep the power on then you handle your own waste.

Which goes for dams. No more building them on our rivers with promises you are helping save water for our use and generate power for us and then go back on all those promises. Dam your own damn rivers. And I do not care if jet noise is the sound of freedom. If the base for the supersonic bomber is in Texas than you do your low level flybys in Texas. Leave our mountains for us and our wild life. Don't wake us up at 2 a.m. to practice for the mountains of Pakistan.

If you big states don't start playing nice us little states just may ban together and pick up our marbles and start our own game. We may be inconsequential when it comes to counting electoral college votes but I promise you will miss our natural resources and our natural beauty when you have to have a passport to visit.

What about drought didn't you understand?

This picture was taken on Lake Powell in October of last year. The lake was at that time 120 feet low.

The Colorado River watershed has been suffering an extended drought. This effects the water levels on Lake Powell and Lake Mead but not as much as the electrical and water use of San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Despite warnings for the last five years from the four states involved in the Colorado River drainage basin there has been no conservation of electricity or water downstream from the four corners area. When Glen Canyon Dam which impounds the water of Lake Powell was built there were promises of sharing water with the Navajo and Ute reservations. Promises that have not come to fruition. Nor has the Navajo Reservation been able to benefit from the power generated by water release.

vast majority of the power generated. Lake Mead and Hoover Dam feeds the power needs of Water is released from Glen Canyon Dam per the needs of Los Angeles which currently gets theLas Vegas. Could some one please turn a light off?

One is reminded of Sodom and Gomorrah when shown night time images of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Nothing to do with the sin and sex but just with the waste. Las Vegas boasts of recycled water in its fountains but I would hazard a guess that with the heat and single digit humidity that the evaporation rate nears 50%. It is currently paying its residents to take up grass and put down gravel but would not consider turning off a fountain.

The only people to benefit from the massive release of water due to gluttonous use of electricity is Phoenix, once a desert it has built a canal system to take water from the Colorado to water over 150 golf courses, fill swimming pools, and landscape its yards.

I listen to the news about the severe situation in Georgia and wonder how long they ignored the lowering of their main water supply before this crisis. We need a conservation plan not just for water but for electricity. And beyond just replacing light bulbs. Just because we can light the night does not mean we should.