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

Quickpost: I know what I promised, and that I'm breaking it. More on Andean glaciers, melt-water, in the next post (honest). Here, I'm just going to point out Aquadoc's latest post on exempt wells in the West, and his useful (.pdf) document written by Bracken on this really good overview of Western States and their differential policies on exempt wells. Treatment on New Mexico starts on p 171(-175) if you want a short-cut on reading. Fascinating reading, and a good follow-up to the original post from February on the problem of domestic wells.

A colleague of mine in geography at Syracuse University, Farhana Sultana , has organized a mini-conference on the Right to Water . It runs all day today and tomorrow (March 29th and 30th). The schedule is packed with interesting sessions, speakers, and time for feedback and dialogue; too many conferences, so little time (and money) on sabbatical (?). But it's encouraging to see more geographers entering, or committed to, the fray on water issues. Indirectly, Aquadoc highlighted another geo-moment from the National Academy of Sciences on the future of the geographic sciences -- typically laden and leaden with technohype and praise for GIS. I understand this, even if my head aches with the internal mantra of "the solutions are not technical." And I say this as someone who teaches from this perspective of environmental geography and GIS (it's what I teach!), so I feel free to critique my own tribe. Another fellow hydroblogger, David Zetland , has been sounding off on t...

Quickpost : There's another competitor emerging to the recent plans by Mr. Million (the name is not a joke, but how suitable); a new group is proposing an alternate pipeline transfer plan between the Colorado River basin and Front Range cities. [This story courtesy of John Fleck's connections.] Colorado has already perfected water the--, er, inter-basin water transfers, as seen in the map. How much longer before we're all living in some simulacrum of nature? Is there such thing as a natural river anymore? Most of my attention this past year has been focused on individuals with water rights, or the community's access and rights to water (acequias), in New Mexico. But this is what happens when states and large metropolitan areas increasingly assert their own allocations and "paper rights" to "wet water." It's also how paper rights translate to power in a basin. And this kind of pipe-rattling does little to benefit interstate diplomacy for rive...

A recent post on the TVAA pages caught my eye, written by a real estate agent based in Espanola. It reads nicely, and it's meant for a wider audience looking to buy property. This is not an anti-property, anti-real estate screed, it's merely a reminder. One of the easiest ways to protect acequias as a ditch, institution, and their important easements is to spread the word about them prior to new property ownership. While I can appreciate this column for what it is, a kind of public-service announcement meets real estate moxy, how many people will stumble on this? Will the dude from Minnesota find this post or clipping from the paper? Wouldn't acequias in the region be better served if property title codes or statutes were changed to protect the ditch and institution? This way local knowledge could be incorporated into title deeds. Or at least it lays the groundwork for better neighborly interactions if a purchaser has a heads-up. I've mentioned this in passing to se...

I have just returned from a fairly full week in Portland, Oregon, a veritable land of water compared to New Mexico and most of the Southwest of course. The trip was for the American Society for Environmental History meetings, and I was fairly disciplined about going to sessions for the first couple of days. The highlight, in educational terms, was the river-boat tour of the Willamette River on Wednesday, prior to the conference start. For many who don't know the region or the Pacific Northwest well, and here I include myself, what was remarkable was the concentration and rich multi-layered effects of heavy industry on the river. Here, in Ecotopia as Joel Garreau once called the Northwest ( Nine Nations of North America ), it was pretty unexpected to see and hear about the heavy human use and footprint. Industry still crowds the river bank of the Willamette that is pretty startling; even new development in the city requires only a 25 foot setback from the river (which is nothing...

Today's post by John Fleck is worth reading - an update, or re-cap, on a plan to move water from the Fort Sumner area of northeastern New Mexico and pump it to Santa Fe. There's already a local version of this near Santa Fe, which I posted about long ago . Fascinating - let's call this the "big water" news of the year for the capital, or at least potential news. Folks along the lower Pecos River are not crazy about the idea , as is understandable. Colorado has already re-engineered its "natural" hydrology so much, it's tough to actually way what mountain trickle becomes the Arkansas or Colorado Rivers anymore. The other update has to do with another transfer up in the Taos area, which you can read about in the Taos Daily News (probably in a couple of weeks) once a decision has been made. In the mean-time the commissioners have scheduled a meeting, this one found courtesy of the TVAA , with public notice posted below for those interested and able...

I am about to attend the 2010 meetings of the American Society for Environmental History in Portland, Oregon, this coming week (March 10-14). One notion that has seemed both appealing and perplexing is whether there is an environmental history to adjudication in New Mexico. Is this possible? Can a river basin lawsuit have its own environmental history and unintended consequences? What changes in land cover (vegetation, crops) and land use (residential, agricultural, etc..) are provoked by getting sued over water rights? There are some fantastic water sessions at this year's ASEH whose theme is " currents of change ." And I'll be torn three ways, between Southwest water content, East Asian water themes, and European water governance sessions. One of the real, palpable, observations made in New Mexico on adjudication was how it provoked irrigators to be quite vigilant over their fields. This is old news to irrigators, of course, but nevertheless a good human equivale...

Disclaimer : This is a self-serving post as it discusses the release of my first book . So, finally, Private Revolutions is due out this month. You can find it at the press site itself, of course, but also at Amazon and Barnes & Noble , or Powell's too (usually a little cheaper at the first two). The premise of this book is fairly simple, even if the years of work that went into it were not simple at all: Ranchers are not an amorphous body of rural evil-doers oppressing communal farmers and ranchers in Mexico. Aaron Bobrow-Strain has also made this argument for Chiapas, Mexico, in his own book . In fact, many "private" ranch owners are also still communal farmers and herders, contra the work of so much social science in Mexico (and Latin America in general). I also give some attention to the larger context of ranching, such as gender, economics, and the ecology and management of private ranches in northern Mexico (read: Sonora ). I'm happy it's out, an...

From Colorado Springs, this is a quick-post update on the Lower Rio Grande adjudication issues we've touched on here before - namely, the long-standing dispute over the Elephant Butte Dam (aka the Rio Grande Project). Of all my interviews, and interactions, during the last 7 months spent in New Mexico - this may have been the thorniest and the one topic where an interested party said they were "not able" to talk to me because of this pending litigation. The problem is that, even without a conversation from said source, people continue to write about it , talk about it. Fun stuff. Here's a story from the Rio Grande (NM) chapter of the Sierra Club on the LRG and the tangled mess of private, state, and federal interests involved. The great-grandson of Nathan Boyd, Scott, continues to pursue this in Gerald Valentine's court in southern New Mexico. The next date to watch: April 8, 2010 - the day the state of New Mexico has to make the feds an "offer of judgmen...