Limerick's Historical Perspective

Water in the West: The Fight Goes On

By John Yewell, 4-19-05

Over lunch, University of Colorado History Professor Patricia Nelson Limerick gave attendees at the Boise Water conference a historical perspective: Water in the American West: The Fight Goes On

Prof. Limerick’s remarks might be boiled down to one point, that while the fight over water will go on, she hoped it would conture will less heat and more light -- or in her words, "fewer ad hominum attacks and an increase in clarity."

(In the blogging spirit, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Patty and I both went to U.C. Santa Cruz.)

The problem with water debates, she said, is that few people are willing to confront their own responsibility for a problem and would prefer to blame others. "We need to spend less time blaming each other and more time finding solutions."

But since blaming each other is going to happen anyway, let’s use that as a starting point. She suggested a new holiday: Hydro-blame Day, when we spend a whole day blaming each other and not taking responsibility for anything.

Limerick painted a picture of Western history in which people were too complicated to be categorized into good guys and bad guys and who often had to promote unpopular ideas -- such as Maj. John Wesley Powell, who argued that water limited human development. Sometimes these ideas must be given credence when it comes to finding solutions for western water shortages.

So she proposed a second new holiday: Unpopularity Day, on which politicians are required to say unpopular truths, and that we can wait for nature to solve problems. The drought is a demonstration of the folly of that.

But it is also true that, thanks to lawyers and hydro-engineers, physical locations don’t come with a predetermined carrying capacity restrained by the disciplines of nature. Aridity forces us to make our own decisions.

We need to think in larger units of time, she said, because water problems and election cycle are an ungainly match. Posterity has rights and we have obligations to respect them.

So she proposed a third new holiday: Take Posterity to Lunch Day

On this holiday you have to imagine someone from posterity in the empty seat next to you at lunch.

When the bill comes, you are supposed to hand it back to waiter and say, "My companion will pay this bill." When the Waiter hands it back and says "You can’t expect a person who isn’t here to pay the bill," you are then obliged to pay it yourself.

You are also not allowed to touch the glass of water sitting in front of posterity’s empty seat.

The record of Western history is full of improbability and surprises, she said. We are not creatures of fate, we can look for innovative approaches, and history does not constrain us. As Wallace Stegner was fond of saying in closing his speeches: "We are free to dream other dreams and better them."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misnamed the University of Colorado. New West regrets the error.

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