Yes, there is a law - several

Back to the issue of water and the west. Water, because of increasing demands on aquifers and surface water, will become a serious problem in most of the world. Even rainfall amounts are decreasing because of the clear cutting of rain forests in the tropical belt.

But I know best about my own backyard which is currently flooded because the man living downstream two lots decided to dam the little Coyote so he could have a pond. It was this summer a fairly crudely built dam and our major issue was a water thief that was diverting water two lots up stream and not putting it back until it skipped over five lots. The state engineer got him to stop his diversion just about the time winter settled in and the creek froze. Which meant the water logged earthen dam built down stream also froze. Which made it a lot more effective.

Now we have more water than we want. The Little Coyote topped its three to four foot banks and is spreading out across the lowlands to widths of 30 and 40 feet and about a third of my property. Upstream of me it is lapping at the sides of County Road B3 (Osha Road). And now we are a bit beyond the mandate of the state engineer's office.

New Mexico governs its water quite closely. The early Spanish settlers set up an acequia or water ditch system that carefully meted out surface water on the basis of acreage of land used for grazing and agriculture. The Mayordomo, or ditch boss, made assessments at the spring run off every year as to just how much water it appeared would be available for use. People that stole water, wasted water, spoiled water or impounded water were criminals on the level of horse and cattle thieves. Mike Nichols wrote humorously about it in his book Milagro Bean Field War. But it is a deadly serious topic here in the mountain west. People have been killed over less.

The problems arise in getting transplants for other states to take it seriously. "It is just water," is likely to be said by a Texan that relocated to the Sangre de Cristos and sees what appears to be abundance here as opposed to the panhandle. In the immortal words of John Wayne, "Those are fighting words." Here their are water rights, both surface and subsurface, and there are wrongs. Nobody owns a stream. You just borrow it as it rushes past you. And technically the same amount of water that entered your land has to exit it.

But at the moment we are into a jurisdictional issue. The stream is governed by the state engineer as part of the Mora Watershed. Fish and game also have a say because my tiny little trickle in mid summer is a nursery for baby Brown Trout. And then the EPA gets a say because the Little Coyote passes through a wetland which is protected by law. My property on the far side of the stream is marsh and attracts the most wonderful collection of birds and a species of the endangered salamander. Then there is Colfax County and the road department. The water is backing up through the culverts under a county road and forming another lake which daily keeps rising.

And it is a warm February. We keep having these little wet snows high in moisture and then warm days that melt it off and it all heads downstream - well, as far as that dam made for that pond which is impounding water and definitely impeding flow. Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of The Incident of the Little Coyote soon to be a major motion picture.

Meanwhile I am e-mailing this blog to all relevant authorities.

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum

I noticed yesterday that my intense interest in the outcome of the Democratic primary had not merely waned but vanished.

Perhaps due to our total technocratic world we are all suffering from attention deficit disorder. Make it march. If you cannot sum it up in the opening paragraph you have to at least made me want to search for your conclusions by reading the next paragraph or listening to the next pundit or catching the next speech.

Sorry but you lost me. This has taken entirely too long. And I don't like the direction it is taking because it seems to be veering back to the same old dirty politics I have come to hate. I was with a few friends last night who I generally like to discuss politics with. They are libertarians and while I don't always agree with them I like their ability to openly discuss the issues with some intelligence (unlike Republicans with their catch phrases). But last night we all did the token sentence or two and moved on to other subjects.

Mud was big. It is spring here in the high country and that means melting snow and lots of mud. Not the slinging kind which seems to still be going on out there in the political world. Oh, speaking of mud, we did discuss Spitzer but because everyone seems to have missed the point and seems to think it is a sex scandal. Everyone seems to have missed that he was committing fraud by setting up dummy accounts to funnel money into so he could pay for those $4,500 per hour sessions.

And we discussed water. That is a really big issue here out west and not a single political candidate for President has addressed it. Seems St. Georges, Utah wants water out of Lake Powell which is getting even lower than it was before because of the amount of water which has to be released to generate electricity for that energy hog Los Angeles. Seems everyone thinks snow levels this year will suddenly make up for four years of drought which brought the lake level to below 1967 when they were filling it. But snow is not that easy. It depends on which side of the mountain it falls. It didn't fall on that side.

On the good news the levels in the Rio Grande will be much higher but we had that declared a wild river and there are no dams on it for Los Angeles and Las Vegas to use to get electricity. And its water is so legislated with compacts and treaties that even if they want to build the pipeline Las Vegas cannot use its water for their fountains.

In short I think there is such a disconnect between the real world out here and politics as usual as to generate a chasm which I don't know that any party or any candidate is going to be able to bridge. Oh, and by the way, I love this definition of insanity: Continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results. There was a point at which I had hope that it was going to be different this year. Wrong. Sorry folks.

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.