The cultures of water in the Southwest
As a colleague and I prepare to launch block 6 (Feb 20th 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 'meet the author' of the book they are reading. 
Our intention the very next day is to spend a few hours with Estevan Arellano, from Embudo, in the morning. After a quick stop at Zuly's Cafe in Embudo, we will then likely barrel down the road to Santa Fe, to tour the Buckman Diversion Project (below) on the outskirts of the city, so that students understand the modern culture of water, and municipal pressures to supply potable water in a semi-arid region. While the class overall is not about water per se, we are using the way that people perceive, use, and treat water (in New Mexico) as a way to get them deeply involved and thinking about how they would carry out research. What are the relevant questions to ask parciantes and irrigators? How can they approach water managers, and what kinds of comparative data or survey questions would get to the heart of their interests? Can humans stand in for the interests of species, as their interpreter, as we often do for organisms protected under the endangered species act? Are there more holistic ways to achieve ecological governance that covers human and non-human concerns?
Part of our challenge is illustrating that the “water issue” in the Southwest is not just about quantity, it’s obviously also about quality, even if the latter is often overlooked. How do the Pueblos along the Rio Grande leverage their own sovereign powers against other water users? When a city water utility and its wastewater are the sixth largest tributary to the Rio Grande itself, namely Albuquerque, what implications does this have for the quality and quantity balance for downstream users? Even the runoff drainage from the city has important hydrologic implications for users downstream, although regular flow is a rarity in the city's concrete channels.
The day after our Santa Fe visit, we will head directly to the Sevilleta and Bosque del Apache wildlife refuges, to give the students exposure to the newest 'culture' of water in the Southwest, ecological waters. Paul, a hydrologist for the USFWS and also a CC graduate, has agreed to accompany us and give us some detailed overviews of the water uses on the refuge. This should be a great way to illustrate the different demands made of water, from us as humans, and from ecosystems and species' perspectives.In a state that is haunted by multiple legacies of extraction, largely mining, the military-industrial complex, and uranium issues, water quality cannot be ignored even if most water resource managers first fret about water quantity. The map, linked below, gives some overall understanding about how complex a task this is in New Mexico. Adelante! And until next time...
http://www.sacredtrustnm.org/p/new-mexico-threat-map.html threat map of air-water-land EJ problems in New Mexico. (Fascinating, via Estevan Arellano)
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