Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Water Politics from the Ground Up
By Joan McCarter, 2-26-08
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Water in the West has become like the weather, everybody talks about it but nobody does much about it. The political hot potato has become no less cool, though definitely less violent, since farmers and ranchers squared off over a century ago.
Into the breach step the folks at Western Progress with a new agenda for water in the Mountain West. They’ve issued a report [pdf] authored by water law experts Denise Fort and Lawrence MacDonnell and informed by a bevy of water and policy experts.
“More and more, we are seeing a realization across the West that the conservation and sustainability of water is essential to our future,” said Lawrence MacDonnell, co-author of A New Western Water Agenda, a policy report out today from Western Progress, “this report seeks to extend existing efforts across the entire region and also suggest new ways of tackling increasing scarcity.”
“The status quo simply won’t work,” said Denise Fort, the other co-author of the report and a professor at the University of New Mexico Law School, “we must find new ways in decrease our use of the limited water supply we face in the West.”
The report lays out the givens, and they paint a potentially grim picture. The region is experiencing the nation’s largest growth, with urban water demands increasing. Global climate change has already had an impact and is expected to be more pronounced in the Rocky Mountain region than in most areas in the country. It has been identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as one of most vulnerable parts of the country to future water shortages due to climate change and variability. The combination of lighter snow packs and increased evaporation because of higher temperatures mean that both ground water and stream flow will be reduced.
And there just isn’t more water to be found:
Until relatively recently, it has been possible to identify sources of water not yet committed to some other, legally-protected use and develop these sources to meet new demands. We could store spring runoff and not interfere with summertime direct flow diversions. We could withdraw ground water without impairing surface water uses or other ground water uses.
It is increasingly difficult to find water sources that are not already committed to another use. We have dammed most rivers to capture high flows and to recapture water for subsequent use. We have tapped ground water at rates well beyond the ability of aquifers to recharge, so water levels have dropped and associated surface water has declined.
This is the situation that most educated observers already know. The question in everybody’s mind, thus, is what in the hell are we going to do about it?
The folks at Western Progress have some ideas.
The eight actions recommended by the report are:
- Strengthen and expand water conservation and efficiency programs
- Integrate water planning with growth management and land use planning
- Adopt integrated strategies at the federal level
- Improve the process for transferring water from agricultural to urban and environmental uses
- Enhance and expand state instream flow programs
- Promote local watershed efforts
- Establish and strengthen statewide and local water trusts
- Improve ground water management strategies
It sounds and looks easy when you put in bullet points, doesn’t it? But trying to get each of those bullet points enacted involves many actors, at the federal, state, and local levels, in and out of government. That’s not even talking about all the stakeholders that have to be engaged—that would be all of us users, from the suburb dweller who loves her garden to the white water rafting company to the farmer to the silicon chip maker. Throw in the power plants and the mining operations and everyone who just wants to take a nice hot shower every day, and you’ve got a pretty thirsty mix.
Trying to save the West’s water has always been and is going to continue to be highly contentious. Which means a lot of our politicians would just as soon skip over it to go on to the next problem that might be a little easier to solve and that will make them fewer enemies. It’s a perfectly understandable reaction—procrastination isn’t just human nature, it’s a hallmark of government. In it lays self preservation.
The thing is, we don’t have more time. The good news is that it’s an election year, meaning we are positioned very well as constituents to start exerting some pressure. At the federal level, not only our Congress people up for their biennial runs, but we have Senate races in five of the eight mountain states: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. There are only two governors’ races, in Montana and Utah. But loads of mayors and city and county council seats are up.
In all, a concerned citizen has an awful lot of leverage in an election year. Consider sending this report to everyone running to represent you, at whatever level, and asking them what they plan to do about it when they’re in office. There isn’t anything more grassroots than water, and we can make this conversation happen.
Editor’s note: Joan McCarter’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
[End of article]There has been no lack of conversation. It's action that's been lacking. Shortly after Governor Schweitzer appointed Mary Sexton to head up DNRC, a groundwater-surfacewater working group began to meet and tackle the overappropriation issues facing Montana. Recommendations were sent to the Legislature, which only addressed a portion of the critical issues. Until "exempt" wells are brought under control, and DNRC begins to seriously analyze cumulative effects of its actions (and inactions), real estate development will continue to suck streams and rivers (and senior water rights) dry. Overappropriation and depletion are already critical issues, which need to be controlled.
Comment By Craig Moore, 2-26-08Western Progress has missed the elephant in the room-- the Army Corp of Engineers. The amount of water they control and suck out of the West to send to the Mississippi is staggering. They don't give a rip about upstream needs during droughts.
Comment By Joan McCarter, 2-26-08Both excellent points, Steve and Craig.
Steve, I think what I was trying to get at but didn't stress enough was that this is something that the people, the constituents, we have to start talking about and demanding what you so correctly point out is lacking--leadership and action.
Craig, it's a good suggestion to them to throw the Corps into the mix.
I believe the Governor needs to make water (qualtity and quality) a centerpiece of his agenda. So far, he's only scolded Canadian coal companies planning to pollute the Flathead River basin with development upstream (in Canada). Popularity for popularity's sake won't clean up the over 1,100 impaired waterbodies in Montana, or attend to the numerous senior water rights being pilfered with impunity by real estate speculators. If not water, Mr. Governor, please tell us what issue is more pressing to Montana's economic, social and cultural future?
Comment By pete geddes, 2-26-08In the entire 38 pp, not one reference to the positve role that prices might play?
Comment By Blaeloch, 2-26-08I'm glad you posted this--I hope to find the time to read it. But my immediate thought is that I hope that something like the absurdity of Nevada is talked about--federal lands being sold off and given away for development that includes golf courses, and a $10 billion pipeline with a free right of way across or public land to suck water out of northen Nevada to send it south to Las Vegas, to water the golf courses and facilitate more development.....that there is a multifaceted public policy eff-up.
Comment By jedediah redman, 2-27-08"...the Army Corp of Engineers. The amount of water they control and suck out of the West to send to the Mississippi is staggering...."
You're complaining that the ACE is sending too much water to the Mississippi?
Before the dams were built all of the water went to the Mississippi. Who was it built those dams?
Perhaps I am not understanding the logic of your argument...
"...federal lands being sold off and given away for development that includes golf courses, and a $10 billion pipeline with a free right of way across or public land to suck water out of northen Nevada to send it south to Las Vegas, to water the golf courses and facilitate more development.....that there is a multifaceted public policy eff-up...."
You're advocating instead that the water be kept in the valley to raise alfalfa for feeding cattle..?
Fundmentalism increasingly dominates American politics. Fundamentalism is contemptuous of emperical science and hostile towards biology that prevents a meaningful discussion about humans place in nature and the limits therein. It is impossible to speak unemotionaly of large-scale human induced negative changes to the natural world as fundamentists will shout you down. Millions believe that we can do "a technological end-run" around biologicial & resource limitation reality.
And I leave with a quote from Barry Lopez: A major segement of the American electorate believes that any concern about where food and water will come from is a superstituous holdover from from the time of primitive people. Man's destiny, his true home, they assert, is in a heaven alongside their one and only God, who gave humans the earth to use for whatever it might provide in the way of confort and material wealth". In other words the earth is nothing more than a depot and if we leave it empty, so be it!
mw, you wrote: "Fundmentalism increasingly dominates American politics." It does seem that Gaianism is dominating the Dem view of things these days, fundamentally speaking.
As to water politics, the tussle is over a limited quantity by an ever expanding population. I think the gods are sitting this one out while chomping popcorn as they watch the combat between urban and rural champions. The only question is whether it will be thumbs up or down for the vanquished.
Jedediah:
Nope.
Blaeloch
As someone living in Las Vegas I find the constant labeling of southern Nevada as nothing more than casinos and golf courses tiresome and highly unenlightened. Perhaps if New West covered more than Missoula and Boulder comments would reflect the fact that Las Vegas does the most with the least when it comes to water in the West. Wyoming, a state of little more than a half a million people, gets more water from the Colorado Compact than southern Nevada - population 2 million. Yes, Vegas needs more water from the north, but what about the economic benefits of that transfer? What about the need to rewrite the Colorado Compact to reflect today's reality? What about those Western states not named Montana and Colorado?
Comment By Blaeloch, 2-27-08Yeah, I forgot to mention casinos.
There may be inequities in the C. Compact, but from what I understand, NV was allotted way less because it was believed that the fact that the southern part of the state consists largely of the Mojave Desert might, um, limit growth there? (Admittedly, a somewhat simplified summary). That has turned out not to be the case; and Pat Mulroy, Harry Reid, and no doubt all of the other political "leaders" running the show beat the drum for more growth, more land privatization, more federal subsidies for that growth, because it simply must continue. It's insane.
Blaeloch,
You are absolutely right, southern Nevada leaders turned to growth for economic salvation sometime during the mid-1980s. The region literally almost ran out of water leading to the Creation of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Growth continued, but the SNWA was able to stretch the 300,000 acre feet alloted by the CRC through some remarkable conservation methods (Anyone in Phoenix paying attention?). Growth continued, which local politicians have failed to slow -- greed is a powerful tool. But at the end of the day it does not matter is Vegas should not be here. It is here, now what do we do from here? I hope to hell that Vegas slows down its rate of growth, but that does not seem likely. In fact growth throughout the Sun Belt is showing no signs of slowing anytime soon as geographer William Travis demonstrates in his publication Western Futures: http://www.centerwest.org/publications/pdf/futures.pdf
Vegas is far from perfect, hell it it isn't even close, but its use of water is much more progressive than most give it credit for. Maybe even a model for other cities.
The Anasazi had a "Golden Age" followed by a 300 year drought. It ended badly by all accounts. Las Vegas is way out beyond its water budget. Could history repeat? Think what a spectacular abandoned site it could be for tourists in the future.
Comment By Mike, 2-28-08Well, Vegas is based on tourism . . . but the Anasazi did not have the technological advantages we have. Which is an important point about water in the West. Part of the solution has to be technological. Whether that be desalination plants, more efficient washing machines, or even dams. few of us living in the West today could do so without an enormous technological safety net. We need to build a better net, as well as change some of our cultural views on natural resources.
Comment By Mercedes, 2-28-08Water has always been a precious resource in the intermountain west. Most farmers and ranchers are all too aware of the need to allocate their shares as efficiently as possible, if they are to survive. But it will take federal legislation, I believe, to mandate water-saving programs, with generous tax credits, to get the majority of users on board. There was some effort at this in the 1970's.
Comment By Blaeloch, 2-29-08If I got to decide "what we do from here" vis a vis Las Vegas I would say at the very least let's stop selling off the public land that belongs to all of us to provide for more sprawl in the desert.
Harry Reid claimed in an NPR story last year (countering a comment I made about sprawl) that there was no sprawl--"we're building high rises now." There are a few highrises (one with a great view of that mini-Eiffel Tower), but the vast majority of what's being built there (or was before the current tanking of the housing market) is sprawl. So the second step of "what to do from here" after stopping the land disposals would be to switch to densification.
That is, assuming one accepts the premise that population growth should continue in the Mojave.
The problem is not accepting the premise, it is going to happen anyway. Suburban sprawl is an enormous problem throughout the region, not just Las Vegas. How many magazine stories have we all read that point to the West as the fastest growing region in the United States for the past fifty years. There does not seem to any end in sight to the region's population growth, the majority of which has been and will continue to be in metropolitan areas. So, if we accept that growth is going to continue, the next question is how to best meet the demands that will occur due to growth and how do we shape growth in a more sustainable way? Yes, the BLM needs to quit selling off land to developers around Las Vegas. But the same dynamic is at play in Phoenix, Tuscon, Salt Lake City, Boise, Denver, you get the point. Stopping growth is an impossibility. We need to move beyond that sort of rhetoric and look at building a better mouse trap.
Also, you need to read Bruce Babbitt's Cities in the Wilderness. Sen. Reid actually has made a massive effort to build an open space beltway around Las Vegas in order to better shape the city's growth.
Sprawl or highrise, it all requires water and sewage disposal.
Stop immigration and quit screwing.
I've done my part...
Everyone certainly has to do their part, and thank you to those of you who already do. But in my opinion, the importance of increasing public awareness is being under represented. As Joan McCarter stated above, "In all, a concerned citizen has an awful lot of leverage in an election year." I can't help but think, to little to late. We all know that politician’s emphasize the issues that are currently on voters mind. As this issue tends to fade into the background of those who don't realize its importance, it tends to also lose impact in an election. Being as the election year is already here... it seems we may have missed this boat. Their needs to be a wide spread effort to encourage that everyone do their part, not just those in areas under fire. To the common folk, this issue doesn't seam to pressing, and that is what needs to change.
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