Land Use and Literature

Money, Land and Water:  Is The Future Grim?

By Leon Sterling, Unfiltered 10-09-05

Just like their counterparts in “the oil business� and big tobacco, it seems that land developers may not be ruled by interest in their fellow man so much as the almighty dollar. Apparently, their short-term financial interests out-weigh our collective near-term future. Why should this be of concern to us? Because so many of us live along the Rio Grande, and some of us live in some of the most arid land in the U.S.

Shortly after we arrived in New Mexico in mid-2004, someone urged us to read “Cadillac Desert.� We did. That book is a chilling account of the contradictory interests at play in the expansion of arid lands – the entire “southwest.� We have more and more builders, more and more cars, and more and more water being used up much faster than it’s being replaced. Some estimates are in the range of only twenty more years of water available for New Mexico.

Surprisingly, the majority of the water use in our part of the world is in agriculture – an estimated 85%. At first that may sound like a good thing, but what “Cadillac Desert� points out is that when the water used by farmers and agricultural interests returns to the aquifer (from which we draw nearly all of our water in New Mexico) it’s very high in saline – salt – which is leeched out of the desert soil. That occurs because all of the southwest was once beneath an ocean. Over time, even if it’s returned to the aquifer, the water used for agriculture is slowly but surely being made unusable. The aquifer is becoming an underground salt lake.

This was one of the things on my mind when we were headed up to Santa Fe where we’d been invited to a book signing for Bruce Babbitt’s newest book. The event was hosted by Senator Jeff Bingaman and Anne Bingaman because of how much they value Babbitt’s work – he is a remarkable contributor to the future, and he wants the southwest to have one.

Mr. Babbitt was a distinguished attorney in his home state of Arizona, then attorney general of Arizona from 1975 to 1978, then governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987. He was a Democratic presidential candidate in 1988, and Secretary of the Interior under President Clinton from 1993 to 2001. He was also considered as a possible successor to Supreme Court Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun in 1993.

Apart from having been a natural resources lawyer and president of the League of Conservation Voters, Mr. Babbitt was also thoroughly trained as a geologist. He received a B.A. in Geology from Notre Dame, an M.S. in Geophysics from the University of Newcastle, England, and an L.L.B from Harvard Law School. So he isn’t talking through his hat when he suggests better ways to use our land.

Mr. Babbitt’s new book, “Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America,� brings fresh questions to how we might build a future we would want to live in. He brings a direct, common-sense approach to major land-use initiatives as well as how to navigate the divergent worlds of science and politics, the two worlds which must agree on any new environmental policies that may be introduced.

In his talk at the Santa Fe book signing, Mr. Babbitt described his socio-political awakening during his earlier days in Arizona; how he went from uncertainty to a clear vision of the kinds of partnerships that would be necessary between local and federal agencies and authorities to ensure a balance between development and conservation. It was a journey that began with confusion about why federal agencies might want to interfere in the business of his state, and ended with the conviction that it was crucial for the federal government to lead the way, to prescribe and promote a more enlightened approach to land use.

When he ended his talk and offered to answer questions, I raised what had been on my mind since reading a recent article in the Albuquerque Journal: “What can people like us do about unrestricted development. What can we do when we read about how Rio Rancho (just northwest of Albuquerque) has granted 6-8,000 new building permits, knowing, as we do, that water in our area is already very limited?�

His answer was roughly, “There has to be a mechanism in place that requires developers and builders to have a plan for water when they apply for building permits. They have to know where the water will come from and how the land will be used that they propose building on. Local authorities need to require builders to present feasible, workable plans for both land use and water use. And the most influential local government agency should be the conservancy board.�

None of us have been unaffected by the country’s changing landscape. We’ve watched individual, undeveloped areas and communities succumb to strip malls, roads and subdivisions that all look so much alike you can park in them and suddenly not remember which state you’re in. Mr. Babbitt believes that we should not assume that when land is developed it’s forever lost. He urges the need to develop local conservation strategies that can stand up to further large-scale development.

In “Cities in the Wilderness,� Mr. Babbitt makes the case for why we need a national vision of land use: “We have a space program but we don’t have an open-space policy that can balance the needs for human settlement and community with those for preservation of the natural world upon which life depends. Yet such a balance is as remarkably achievable as it is necessary.�

Mr. Babbitt is not calling for the development of any new federal bureaucracy. Rather, he shows how much can be – and has been – done through the application of beneficial laws and institutions already in place. He warns of agricultural sprawl and water pollution, and the need for smart growth. He is urging us to maintain natural space that supports wildlife, provides clear streams, and retains the ecological functioning of the land.

Mr. Babbitt was one of the architects of environmental change during the 1990s. He led the battle to restore the Florida Everglades, to restore tall-grass prairies, to return wolves to Yellowstone and condors to the wild, to dismantle obsolete dams and to establish the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

The current administration has all but reversed much of what Bruce Babbitt helped put into place, giving into big business without care for even their own grandchildren’s futures.

My Boston brother-in-law lent me “John Adams� by David McCullough a few years back because he felt it was an important book. After I’d read it, and we were discussing the quite remarkable life of John Adams, my brother-in-law said, “it’s truly disappointing to realize that when this country was started all the best and brightest minds were in politics, but today the best and brightest are all CEOs and have no interest in politics.�

This sobering thought stayed with me, and I have rarely found it to be untrue. Bruce Babbitt is a singular example of someone who could have gone into business, but instead chose to contribute to the state of our land by immersing himself in the politics of managing it.

Bruce Babbitt’s writing is tremendously compelling. One forgets that one is reading a lesson in land use and instead is drawn in to the history that is everywhere in the book. It’s no less compelling than the story of John Adams. But in this case it’s our story, the story of what we’ve done with our land since it was first called the United States, and an urgent call for us to participate in how the story will be told in the future.

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Leon Sterling is an award-winning advertising, public relations and marketing communications writer/consultant now located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He can be reached via e-mail at:

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