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<text>You are about search for bibliographical information in the water resources database, brought to you by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and the USDA Forest Service Partners in environmental education. To start browsing through the bibliography, just click on the mouse.</text>
<text>SANTA FE ΓÇö A coalition of environmental groups wants Congress to consider taking management of the upper Rio Grande in Taos County away from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.The BLM leans too heavily toward consumptive uses of the land and hasn't been protecting the area adequately, the Rio Grande Alliance said in letters to New Mexico's congressional delegation, Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. and other U.S. officials.The Rio Grande, from the Colorado border downstream for about 50 miles, was among the first U.S. rivers to be protected under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. which bans mining and other development within a quarter-mile of the water on each side.The group says the BLM's mandate is not conservation and that the agency has never adequately funded conservation of the river area. It also says the state and local BLM management orientation and commitment are inconsistent with the conservation mission.Michelle Chavez, area resource manager for the BLM in Taos, said the BLM wants to retain management of the area.Albuquerque Journal. "Environmentalists Condemn BLM Control of Rio Grande." Albuquerque Journal. 21 July 1990. D2.</text>
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<text>Albuquerque Journal. "Environmentalists Condemn BLM Control of Rio Grande." Albuquerque Journal. 21 July 1990. D2.</text>
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<text>COMPILED FROM JOURNAL WIRESWASHINGTONΓÇöAfter months of tense infighting, the Bush administration has agreed on new criteria that would remove millions of acres of land from protection as "wetlands" and open them to development, administration officials said Thursday.Significant revisions to the official definition of wetlands were accepted by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Reilly.Reilly had fought for a broader definition that would ~have come : closer to upholding conservationists' interpretation of President Bush's 1988 campaign pledge to achieve no net loss" of wetlands. But he was outnumbered by White House officials, Cabinet officials and members of Congress who criticized his broader criteria as antigrowth.At issue was an official 1989 manual that lists the criteria that land must meet to qualify for protection as wetlands. Ecologists use the term to cover habitats ranging from lush coastal marshes, thick in waterfowl and rare vegetation, to prairie "potholes" that are dry most of the year.Written by scientists, the manual sets limits on development plans by oil companies, real-estate developers and timber companies seeking to fill in and develop wetlands. Such plans require approval by the Army Corps of Engineers and are subject to veto by the EPA.Even Reilly conceded the existing criteria were so broad that farmers have been prevented from selling land tilled for decades.The American Farm Bureau Federation has criticized the current wetlands policy, saying it is so oppressive and confusing that Bush should halt all federal environmental initiatives the group believes threaten the property rights of private citizens. Federation President Dean Kleckner accused EPA and other agencies of "environmental overkill" in a letter to Bush last month.The administration dispute centered on the question of how far to narrow the criteria to determine which wetlands deserve protection. Most contentious were the issues of how wet the land must be and what vegetation is characteristic of wetlands.The current manual confers protection on land saturated as deep as 12 inches for at least seven consecutive days a year. Reilly sought to raise the threshold to 15 straight days of saturated soil at the surface. White House officials pressed for 21 straight days of surface saturation. The compromise is 15 straight days of standing water and 21 days of surface saturation.According to estimates of some wetlands experts, the manual revisions could remove protections from at least 10 percent of the 100 million acres now classified as wetlands.Albuquerque Journal. "Revised Wetlands Definition OK'd." Compiled from Journal Wire reports. 4 August 1991. G7.</text>
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<text>Albuquerque Journal. "Revised Wetlands Definition OK'd." Compiled from Journal Wire reports. 4 August 1991. G7.</text>
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<text>Animas - La Plata Project ΓÇö Colorado and New MexicoWater has always played an important role in the settlement of the west, and settlers and Indian Tribes always sought a dependable water supply for domestic use and irrigating crops. When supplies were scarce they moved on; when supplies were sufficient they remained. Because of the lack of adequate storage, the water supplies of the past cannot serve the future needs of a growing area. The Animas - La Plata Project, a multi-purpose water resource project, is designed to serve the future water needs of southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico.Project ObjectivesThe project will furnish water for municipal and industrial use and irrigation in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico. Project water will be provided for the City of Durango and to rural subdivisions in the surrounding area. Water for the rural La Plata area will serve residents in the La Plata River drainage area, and the Animas - La Plata Water Conservancy District will purchase water for future needs. The Southern Ute Indian Tribe and Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe will obtain project municipal and industrial water for future potential use.In New Mexico, project water will be provided for the San Juan Water Commission to serve the cities of Farmington, Aztec, and Bloomfield, and the surrounding rural areas. Project municipal and industrial water will also be provided to the Navajo Nation in the Shiprock area. Project water will be provided for the irrigation of approximately 42,800 acres of non-lndian and Indian land in both states.Recreational opportunities will be made available with the project. The developing of land for wildlife will compensate for habitat losses and a program will be instituted to collect and preserve cultural resources.Project Financing and Indian Water RightsThe United States Congress required a cost-sharing agreement between the project beneficiaries and the Federal government. Under this agreement of June 30, 1986, the project will be constructed in two phases. The parties to the cost-sharing agreement are the State of Colorado; Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority; Montezuma County, Colorado; Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District; New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission; San Juan Water Commission, New Mexico; Southern Ute Indian Tribe; Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe; and the U.S. Department of the Interior. Non-Federal entities will finance Phase 2 construction.The Colorado Ute Indian Water Rights Final Settlement Agreement of December 10, 1986, as provided for in the cost-sharing agreement, includes the Animas-La Plata Project as a cornerstone in the settlement of the long-standing Indian water right claims of the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribes in Colorado. The project provides for eliminating competition between the Indian Tribes and non-lndian water users through an equitable solution to these claims.Project PlanUnder Phase 1, Ridges Basin Reservoir, an off-stream project reservoir located southwest of Durango, will store water pumped from the Animas River. Reservoir releases will be made as necessary back to the Animas River for New Mexico's municipal and industrial users downstream and to the Durango Municipal and Industrial PipeIine to provide water for the City of Du rango. Water will be pumped from the reservoir and conveyed to rural subdivisions west of Durango through the Shenandoah Municipal and Industrial Pipeline. The Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Indian Tribes will receive project water stored in the reservoir. Water pumped from the reservoir for the Colorado and New Mexico irrigators will be conveyed through the Dry Side Canal and Long Hollow Tunnel. Water can also be diverted from the canal to the La Plata River for irrigation in Colorado and New Mexico, as well as continue in the canal to irrigate land in western La Plata County. Colorado municipal water users in the La Plata River drainage will also receive project water delivered through the canal and tunnel. The Southern Ute Inlet and Interim Irrigation Canal will convey water diverted from the river by the Southern Ute Diversion Dam for the irrigation of land in New Mexico. Sprinkler irrigation will be provided by pressure developed through gravity pipe laterals and, on one lateral system, a pumping plant. A total of 42,800 acres of full and supplemental service land will be irrigated under Phase 1. Preconstruction activities began in 1986 as a prelude to the first major construction activity in 1989. Phase 1 is scheduled to be completed in approximately 12 years.Under Phase 2, water will be diverted from the La Plata River to the Dry Side Canal by the La Plata Diversion Dam during spring runoff. Southern Ute Reservoir, near the Colorado-New Mexico State line will receive water from the Southern Ute Diversion Dam and Inlet Canal. This offstream reservoir will store water for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe for development of coal resources on the reservation and for New Mexico irrigation. The New Mexico Irrigation Canal will carry water released from the reservoir to land in New Mexico. Approximately 2 miles of the Dry Side Canal and 4 pumping plants and pipe laterals will be developed to serve approximately 24,600 acres of land in Colorado and New Mexico.The Economic BaseThe project will provide jobs for the people and stimulate the economy of La Plata County, Colorado, and San Juan County, New Mexico, and benefically influence agriculture and recreation. In the first year of construction on Phase 1, about 10 people will have jobs working for the contractor and the government and will earn $222,000 in salaries.During the peak years of construction, 8 through 10, this number will rise to an average of 860 people who will earn about $18,500,000 per year. In the final year of construction, this number will total approximately 570 people who will receive about $12,200,000 in salaries. Construction salaries will generate approximately $2,200 annually in sales taxes during the first year, average $185,000 per year during the peak years, and decline to approximately $122,000 in the final year. Other jobs and income not related to construction will also be generated as a result of the project.On completion of Phase 1, a total of approximately 110 jobs will be created in both agriculture and related businesses, including almost 40 new on-farm jobs in Colorado and New Mexico.Annual gross agricultural production would be increased by an estimated $15,750,000, and annual net farm income would be increased by about $8,820,000. Approximately 23,750 acres of non-lndian dry land will be added to the tax rolls as irrigated farmland.The project will also help meet anticipated recreation needs in the area. Ridges Basin Reservoir will accommodate up to 1,800 people per day, providing the area with an additional 210,000 recreation days annually. A recreation day ranges from a visit of a few hours to one of an entire day.For boating and fishing, a 7-1ane boat ramp will be available at Ridges Basin Reservoir. The reservoir will be stocked with trout. Approximately 10 miles of hiking trails and 50 camping and 50 picnic sites will be available for public use.Animas-La Plata Project. Publication of United States Department of the Interior. Bureau of Reclamation. Upper Colorado Region. Durango Colorado 81302. (303) 385-6500. DPO 7/87.</text>
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<text>Animas-La Plata Project. Publication of United States Department of the Interior. Bureau of Reclamation. Upper Colorado Region. Durango, Colorado 81302. (303) 385-6500. DPO 7/87.</text>
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<text>LOST HILLS, Calif.ΓÇöIt is almost spring in the San Joaquin Valley, and as farmer Fred Starrh surveys the brown, thirsty land stretching to the horizon, he remembers how it used to be."There would be acres of cotton, pistachio and almond trees, fields of hayand tomatoes growing out there," he says. "It was beautiful."But that was long ago.It's been five years now since the California drought began drying up the land's life bloodΓÇöwater. For five years state irrigation water allotments have grown smaller and growers have struggled to adjust their crops.Then, last week, Starrh and fellow farmers got the worst news yet. State officials said they would cut off all water deliveries to California farmers to save dwindling supplies for cities.The farm community was unprepared."I don't think anybody ever felt zero was a possibility," said Starrh, who has farmed in Kern County for 40 years and understands the politics of water.Reactions range from fear to anger, with politicians blamed by the farmers for inadequate state reservoirs, he said.Starrh traces the latest problem to the state's failure to complete the Water Project, which ran out of money about 15 years ago. Farmers who pay dearly for water entitlements aren't getting what they were promised, he said.He's also angry at environmentalists he holds responsible for blocking a canal to bring water south from the Sacramento Delta."The farmers are really frustrated," he said. "We're good conservationists. We take care of our grounds. We deal with the insects, the pesticides and the politicians. And then we have folks who have captured the media attention by bad-mouthing us."The federal Central Valley Project, relied upon by farmers to an even greater extent than the state project, has also warned farmers of a possible 75 percent cutback on water deliveries.With half the wet season over, rainfall and the snowpack are averaging a quarter normal statewide. Water storage in California's reservoirs is about 30 percent of normal.For Starrh, 61, who farms 8,000 acres of cotton, almonds and hay, the water cutoff will mean losses of about $6 million in gross revenues, he said. His company's normal net of $150,000 will probably be wiped out and he'll wind up in the red, he said.He has already decided not to plant cotton on the 4,500 acres usually devoted to that crop.Starrh has been a farmer long enough to know other tough times. But never a drought like this. On a tour of his land, Starrh pointed sadly to the idle cotton-picking machines and irrigation pipes. Normally, 40 workers would be on duty; now the fields are empty.Whatever water Starrh obtains from the local water bank will go to his permanent crop, 265 acres of almond trees now 10 years old and good for a life span of 30 years if they don't dry up.In a few weeks, the trees will begin sprouting blossoms, a sign of hope in a barren landscape.Can farmers survive the drought?"We're not going to get any water this year," said Starrh. "...If it started raining now it would help for next year. Rain and snow, that's where it's at."Associated Press. "Drought, Politics Choke California Farmers." Associated Press story in the Albuquerque Journal. 10 February 1991. G9.</text>
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<text>Associated Press. "Drought, Politics Choke California Farmers." Associated Press story in the Albuquerque Journal. 10 February 1991. G9.</text>
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<text>THE ASSOCIATED PRESSThe New Mexico Wildlife Legislative Council said damage to the endangered Colorado squawfish by the Animas-La Plata water project also would lead to damage to other species."The Colorado squawfish are indicator species and the damage of the Animas-La Plata project would extend to the habitat of countless other species," the council said.The council, a coalition of hunting, fishing and environmental interests, unanimously approved a resolution condemning the massive water project in northwest New Mexico and southern Colorado as unnecessary.The council approved the resolution July 29 during a meeting in Socorro, supporting an opinion by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that Animas-La Plata would damage the habitat of the endangered Colorado squawfish.The Fish and Wildlife Service said May 8 that the project would deplete water in the San Juan River Basin and that there appeared to be no alternative except to halt it to protect the fish. The opinion delayed the $422 million water project, although $13.4 million for the project was approved by a Senate committee last month.The wildlife council demanded that the federal Endangered Species Act be enforced and that elected, appointed and federally employed officials refrain from pressuring the Fish and Wildlife Service to compromise that law.Its resolution also said the Animas-La Plata project is "designed to operate on a questionable cost-benefit ratio" and the need for additional water resources has not been demonstrated.The council sent a letter last week to Jim Dunlap chairman of the San Juan Water Commission, enclosing a copy of the resolution. The letter said the biological opinion of the Fish and Wildlife Service is right and is in the interests of the majority of the citizens.The Animas-La Plata project, which has been planned for decades, would bring water to communities in northwestern New Mexico and southern Colorado and to two Colorado Indian tribes.Associated Press. "Wildlife Board Says Animas-La Plata Unneeded." Albuquerque Journal. 8 August 1990. D2.</text>
<text>SANTA FE (AP) ΓÇö Taxing water rights would solve water shortage problems in New Mexico, California and other states, a member of a tax reform group said. Steven Cord, speaking to members of the Council of Georgist Organizations, said the West's water problems are a result of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation selling water for irrigation to farmers on interest-free terms. Cord said that practice encourages farmers to raise the kinds of crops that require a lot of water. "If California could dispense with them (water-intense crops), much water could be saved, leaving a vast and undiminished acreage for crops that make sense," Cord told about 30 people Saturday at the College of Santa Fe. Those crops include grapes, tomatoes and citrus fruit, among other vegetables and fruits, he said. Bureau of Reclamation officials were not available for comment. Members of the Georgist Council draw their views from the works of Henry George, a l9th century author who wrote books on economic and social reform. George's principal focus centered on a single tax on land values, eliminating all taxes on productive agriculture, labor and capital. Farmers in the West waste scarce water at taxpayer expense, Cord said. He said the practice is particularly ridiculous because irrigation users pay substantially less than what urban users pay for the same amount of water. Water policies in the West grant the rights to own and use water to the first person who petitions for it, provided that he "use or lose it," Cord said. "This may sound fine," he said. "But in practice it means the first claimant loses whatever water he doesn't use, thereby encouraging him to use as much as he can, even if he wastes it." Associated Press. "Water Rights Taxes Sought." Las Cruces Sun-News. 30 July 1990. 7A.</text>
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<text>Associated Press. "Water Rights Taxes Sought." Las Cruces Sun- News. 30 July 1990. 7A.</text>
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<text>BY CINDY BARKSStaff ReporterThe city of Prescott is prepared to go ahead with a water farm proposal - if the needed federal legislation is passed.That was the word from Prescott city officials at a meeting with Verde Valley officials in Cottonwood last week to explain the proposal for a water farm on the Big Chino basin at the Davis Ranch.Prescott City Counci1 Member Bill Turner said last Thursday that a majority of his city council is behind the idea of developing a water farm on the Davis Ranch property of PrescottThe proposal, which would take an act of Congess, includes piping water from the Davis Ranch area to Prescott as well as to the Verde River.According to Turner, the Prescott City Council's motivation for the proposal centers around Prescott's future."(The council) recognizes that our current well field, from which we get about 95 percent of our water, is in an Active Management Area." said Turner.He said the Active Management Area "goes into effect" in the year 2000. At that time, the withdrawal ability of the city's well field would be reduced, said Turner.So, to provide for Prescott's future water needs, said Turner, the water farm idea appears to be the way to go.Prescott City Attorney Kane Graves agreed, pointing out that the Big Chino plans is seen by Prescott officials as "environmentally compatible" with the area."We view it as an environmental plus," said Graves after the meeting. He added that the proposal is among the dwindling options open the city of Prescott.Michael Brophy of the Phoenix-based Ryley, Carlock & Applewhite firm, who serves as an attorney for the city of Prescott, explained that the city has tried for years to find a way to divert water from the Verde River or its headwaters to help with the water supply situation.But, said Brophy, the status of an endangered species of fish in the Verde stalled those plans."The city of Prescott has done everything it can to see if it can divert water," said Brophy. "But (the city) cannot come to a conclusion that doing that will not have an adverse effect on the fish."So, said Brophy, the city of Prescott began looking for "a groundwater source that would not have adverse impacts on the Verde River."Brophy cautioned the Verde Valley officials and residents at the meeting that they should take note of Prescott's water problems because many of the same problems may be in store for the Verde Valley."You folks should take note of Prescott's predicament," said Brophy. "You are going to encounter many of the same problems as Prescott has."Barks, Cindy. "Water Problems in Prescott Could Be Sign of Times for Community Leaders in Valley." Verde Independent. Cottonwood, Arizona. no date available.</text>
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<text>Barks, Cindy. "Water Problems in Prescott Could Be Sign of Times for Community Leaders in Valley." Verde Independent. Cottonwood, Arizona. no date available.</text>
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<text>By Cindy BarksStaff ReporterPrescott city officials say a water farm proposal for the Big Chino basin would benfit the Verde River, but Verde Valley officials are still looking for more answers befor they make up their minds about the proposal.Prescott city officials and water consultants met with about 50 Verde Valley officials and residents in Cottonwood last week to hash out details of the federal water farm proposal being considered on the Big Chino basin at the Davis Ranch.The water farm is being proposed by as an answer to Prescott's water needs, as well as to satisfy the federal government's obligations to the Fort McDowell Indian Tribe.Under the proposal, which would require an act of Congress, the local communities would transfer their Central Arizona Project (CAP) allocations to the federal government.In return, the U.S. government would develop a 50,000-acre water farm at the Davis Ranch, tapping into the Big Chino aquifer, to help provide for the water needs in the area.The federal government would then use the CAP allocations from Prescott, Cottonwood, Camp Verde, the Yavapai-Apache Tribe, and Prescott's Yavapai Tribe as the missing link in a recent water settlement with the Fort McDowell Indian Tribe.The water farm idea was first brought to the attention of Verde Valley officials in February, after Prescott officials returned from a trip to Washington, D.C.Since Verde Valley officials learned of the proposal, there has been some concern expressed locally about the impact the water farm would have on the water level of the Verde River.But according to Prescott's consulting attorney Michael Brophy, such concerns are unfounded."Rather than depleting the water from the Verde River, (the water farm) would be augmenting the Verde River," Brophy told the Verde Valley officials.He explained that the proposal calls for two piplines from the water farm - both to the city of Prescott's water supply area and to the Verde River.But Cottonwood City Council Member Joe Jones voiced the concern for the Verde River once again. "My first concern is that we have some type of guarantee that by pumping out of the Big Chino, you are not taking water out of aquifer under the Verde River," said Jones.But according to Brophy, the federal legislation includes safeguards for the Verde River. He maintained that the legislation requires the U.S. Department of Interior to prove that the water farm proposal would not adversely affect the Verde River.Cottonwood Mayor Ron Moen expressed some concern for such heavy federal involvement in Arizona's water situation."One of the things that scares me is getting the federal government involved in Arizona's water," said Moen. "In my opinion (The federal government) can screw more things up in hurry."But Brophy pointed out that the federal government is already heavily involved in the state's water with the CAP."The federal govemment is into Arizona water up to its hips," said Brophy. He allowed, however, that most of the federal involvement includes surfacewater rather tnan groundwater, as would be the case in the Big Chino water farm."The United States generally sticks to surface water," said Brophy. "But in our (Prescott's) case, there is not other alternative."Local officials also expressed concern about the expense of running the pipline from Sullivan Lake to the Verde River.Brophy explained that the federal government would foot the bill for the water farm and for transporting it the 17 miles to the Sullivan Lake area at the head waters of the Verde River.From there, Prescott would have to pay to transport the water the remaining distance to the city's water operations. And the Verde Valley would be responsible for building the seven-mile pipeline to the Verde River.According to Brophy, the pipeline would have to bypass the headwaters of the Verde River, which is the home of an endangered fish species.Camp Verde Mayor Thomas "Tap" Parsons questioned Brophy about the funding situation. "Would we have to find the funding to get the water to the Verde River?" asked Parsons.According to Brophy, the Verde Valley communities should get together to form a "unified voice" in seeking the funding for the needed pipeline. "You should organize to make sure the water is delivered to you," said Brophy.It was that attitude that Yavapai County Supervisor Carlton Camp took exception with. "I disagree with you," Camp told Brophy. "What is being proposed is a deal that would benefit Prescott on one end and the Indians on the other. It should be a package deal that would benefit everybody."Added Camp: "This sould be one deal, not two or three deals. If we go into this thing, we should go in altogether."Parsons also questioned Brophy on the status of the federal legislation. "Will this bill be successful without the support of the (Verde Valley)?" he asked.Although Brophy said the bill could be successful without the support of the Verde Valley, others in the audience disagreed.After the meeting, Camp questioned the proposal's success withouth the support of all involved. "I don't think they could get the legislation passed if it doesn't satisfy us," he said.Prescott Council Member Bill Turner maintained that Verde Valley officials should realize Prescott is going to go ahead with the proposal if the legislation is passed."Turner cautioned against delays in the proposal. "I beleive we have until 1993 to get a plan," he said of the water situation. "After that, the water will be allocated. This is an opportunity for you to have a solution for that."(The rest of the article is not legible.)Barks, Cindy. "Prescott Officials Claim Water Farm Will Provide Benefits to Verde River." Verde Independent. Cottonwood, Arizona. 11 April 1990. A1.</text>
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<text>Barks, Cindy. "Prescott Officials Claim Water Farm Will Provide Benefits to Verde River." Verde Independent. Cottonwood, Arizona. 11 April 1990. A1.</text>
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<text>By Dennis Brownridgeand Steve HinchmanFew structures heat up environmental emotions as much as Arizona's Glen Canyon Dam, a wound in the flesh of conservationists since it was completed in 1963.Most of their ire has focused on the dam's upstream impactsΓÇöthe drowning of Glen Canyon's haunting redrock walls under Lake Powell. But over the years, the focus has shifted to the dam's ongoing downstream impactsΓÇöthe scouring of the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park.For the last 15 years, river runners, environmentalists and lovers of the Grand Canyon have vainly sought an environmental impact study on the dam's operation.They charge that daily tides created by the dam are wreaking havoc on the park below: eroding beaches and banks, stranding boaters, cutting endangered fish off from spawning zones and forever altering the canyon's riparian ecosystem.For 15 years, the federal agencies that manage the damΓÇöthe Bureau of Reclamation (Department of Interior) and the Western Area Power Administration (Department of Energy)ΓÇöhave refused to deal with those impacts, arguing that their job is to produce kilowatt-hours, not save beaches.Supported by a consortium of utilities that use the dam's power, the federal agencies have blocked every move environmentalists and others made to gain a voice in Glen Canyon Dam's operation.But last summer the feds broke. Faced with evidence of severe environmental degradation, mounting public pressure both in the U.S. and worldwide, and concerted lobbying from Congress, Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan on July 17 ordered BuRec officials to begin an EIS on how dam operations affect the canyon.Two months later, on Sept. 29, the environmentalists scored an even biggervictory. Utah Federal District Judge J. Thomas Greene ruled against the Western Area Power Administration in a lawsuit filed by the National Wildlife Federation, Grand Canyon Trust and rafting groups.Greene found that WAPA's sales of Glen Canyon dam power had clearly caused "irreparable injury" to the Grand Canyon river corridor. He revoked several recent WAPA power contracts and told the agency to write a second EIS on how its power sales affect the canyon.Beginning of the battleThese first official recognitions that Glen Canyon Dam has and continues to harm the Grand Canyon environment add up to a major victory for environmentalists. But it is just the first round in what may turn out to be one of the biggest environmental battles of the next decade."The Glen Canyon EIS is the most important EIS the Bureau has ever prepared," says Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who oversees both BuRec and WAPA as chair of the House Interior Committee's Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment.Miller calls the Grand Canyon one of the most treasured natural landmarks in the United States, if not the world. He says the studies are an important precedent."It is not the first hydroelectric darn to be challenged on environmental grounds," Miller says. "Action was taken to restore salmon on the Columbia River after it became clear that dams on that river were having a devastating effect on fish survival. But it sets a precedent for going back and re-thinking a dam project."It will be a high profile investigation. Putting the canyon environment on par or even above power production would mean a fundamental change in the way rivers are managed in the West.Every major environmental organization has targeted the Glen Canyon Dam as a key issue. The National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Academy of Sciences and four congressional subcommittees are also watching.It is not a simple issue. Glen Canyon is the key dam in the Colorado River Storage Project: a series of water storage and hydroelectric projects in the Colorado River Basin, which include Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green River in Utah and the three dams of the Curecanti unit on the Gunnison River in Colorado.The project's primary purpose as mandated by Congress in 1956 is to store Colorado River water for allocation among all the basin states. But Congress also told the Bureau of Reclamation to "produce the greatest amount of power and energy that can be sold at firm power and energy rates."BuRec has done that. Glen Canyon's eight turbines have a combined capacity of 1,300 megawatts, which make up more than 10 percent of WAPA's power supply.BuRec built and runs the Colorado River dams. WAPA serves as the power broker for the 50 federal hydroelectric projects in the West and tells BuRec when to turn the dams on and off, based on regional power needs.However, most of the revenue from Glen Canyon's turbines does not accrue to the federal treasury. Instead it is passed on to public utilities in the form of power rates that, at 1 cent per kilowatt hour, are among the cheapest in the nation.Those utilities, known as the Colorado River Electric Distributors Association, or CREDA, serve an estimated one million retail customers in six states: Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and parts of Nevada. David Conrad, a water specialist with the National Wildlife Federation, says cities and counties with CREDA power pay about one-fourth of market prices.CREDA depends heavily on that subsidy, and WAPA and the utilities have found ways to increase its dollar value. For the first decade or so of production WAPA marketed the power as baseload supplyΓÇöaround-the-clock electric generationΓÇöand the river flowed relatively smoothly.But over the last 15 years, WAPA has increasingly used the dam for peaking powerΓÇögeneration when electricity is at its highest demand and highest costΓÇöwhich sends the river downstream in pulses that chew up the environment but save the utilities tens of thousands of dollars.Despite environmental concerns, BuRec, WAPA and CREDA continue to increase the economic value of the 25-year-old darn's hydropower operations.In the early 1980s, BuRec rewrapped Glen Canyon's turbines, increasing its peaking power capacity by 16 percent; and over the last few years WAPA has begun to blend its power with other federal hydroelectric dams and non-federal power plants to increase the peaking power available to CREDA customers (see accompanying story).River pays the priceThe gradual integration of Glen Canyon Dam into the West's energy machine has sparked a growing movement to save the river corridor downstream. Balanced against the view of the dam as a power station and cash register is the overpowering experience of the Grand Canyon.The Grand Canyon is regarded as one of the world's premier whitewater runs. It winds 240 miles through the longest de facto wilderness in the contiguous states.Recreational river running was born there, half a century ago. But the Colorado in the canyon today is very different from the virgin stream. The dam replaced the great spring floods and low summer flows with daily tides that ebb and flood as the generators follow hourly demands for electricity.In narrow stretches, the river can rise and fall as much as 13 feet in a day."The river's being operated like a flush toilet," says Dan Dagget, conservation chair of the Sierra Club's northern Arizona group.Rafters say the unnatural fluctuations are damaging the canyon environment and degrading visitor's experience."At some rapids, when the flow is low, boatmen have to stop and wait until higher flows come along," says Rob Elliott, vice-president of Western River Guides Association, who has been running the river since 1965.The old Colorado was the nation's muddiest river: "Too thin to plow and too thick to drink," as the saying went. Let a cupful stand and you might get a third of a cup of mud. The reddish silt and clay gave the river its nameΓÇöEl Rio Colorado, the red-colored river. Sixty million tons of it were carried down the river each year, replenishing the beaches scoured away by annual floods.Now that sediment settles behind the dam. Veteran river runners say beaches have shrunk noticeably, especially in narrow stretches like Marble Gorge and Granite Gorge, where they were always scarce."Our primary concern is the erosion of the beaches, because it's irreversible," says Elliott. "It's getting so there aren't enough quality campsites to go around."Despite several years of study, sediment transport through the canyon remains poorly understood. But some hydrologists think the beaches would eventually stabilize if it weren't for the large daily fluctuations. They are particularly concerned about the rapid ramping rate, the speed at which the river is raised and lowered.The dam's effects on the river's sediment load and water quality are so thoroughΓÇöfiltering out sediments, suspended solids and nutrientsΓÇöthat 300 miles downstream Nevada has had to begin fertilizing Lake Mead to keep its trophy sport fishery alive.The dam has also had enormous impacts on vegetation and wildlife. Spared the annual floods, new vegetation has taken hold on the river banks. Some species, like the introduced tamarisk, now dominate, and are pushing out the native plants.While some regard the "tammies" as buggy pests, they have also attracted five times more birds than used to live in the canyon.The dam's clear, cold waters have spawned a fabulous rainbow trout fishery, but simultaneously extirpated half of the eight fish species native to the canyon and reduced the rest to endangered or threatened status. The rapid fluctuations have also been known to cut off the remaining native fish from spawning areas in warm side canyons."The river is so artificial now, I don't think we can ever really restore the native fish," laments Daggett.The impacts to recreation, however, are a mixed bag. In summer, the natural river was warm enough to swim or paddle across on an air mattress. Now the water comes out of the depths of the reservoir at a frigid 45 degrees. Boaters who fall in are as likely to die of hypothermia as from drowning, and several do each year.Cross-canyon foot travel has been effectively banned (except at Phantom Ranch, where there is a bridge). Nevertheless, most summer rafters say they like the cold water, which "air conditions" the hot canyon floor and lets them chill their drinks."We've improved the recreationist's opportunity," contends Lloyd Greiner, WAPA's area manager. "Prior to 1963, only a thousand people had gone down than canyon. Now 15,000 to 20,000 go down every year. They would not be going down there without that dam."He says the clear, cold water has made the river more attractive, and the dam has lengthened the rafting season by eliminating dangerous spring floods and providing higher summer flows."That's baloney," responds Elliott. "In the late 1960s river running was exploding all over the West. We could have run trips [on the virgin river] all year. We'd just use different equipment, a different style in different seasons. We'd use big motor boats in the spring and small oar-powered boats in the late season."Living with the damEnvironmentalists concede that many of the dam's impacts can't be changed and that some may be perceived as desirable. But they want to minimize the negative effects."Nobody's talking about removing the dam," says Liz Birnbaum, a lawyer with the National Wildlife Federation. "The issue is, should we operate it solely for a relatively small group of people who use the power, or for the international resource which is the Grand Canyon?"Ed Norton, president of the Grand Canyon Trust, a regional conservation organization, adds, "The 1968 Colorado River Basin Act makes it very clear that other prioritiesΓÇörecreation, fish and wildlifeΓÇöare at least equal to hydropower."The groups want to see higher minimum flows, with the flow regimen smoothed out to let the river regain its balance. While the environmental impact studies are being prepared, the National Park Service has called for interim minimum flows of at least 5,000 cubic feet of water per second.Environmentalists would prefer an 8,000 cfs minimum and rafting concessionaires say they would like to see steady daily flows, which in mostmonths would be even higher. Current minimum flows are 3,000 cfs in the summer and 1,000 cfs in the winter.Recently, Bureau of Reclamation officials have kept quiet on the minimum flow and fluctuation issue, instead letting WAPA fight the battle. WAPA contends, categorically, that power production comes first and resists changing operations.Lloyd Greiner says, "We don't think it has been substantiated that daily fluctuations an having an adverse effect on the canyon."WAPA estimates that power revenues from the dam total about $80 million and officials say increasing minimum flows to 5,000 cfs would cost their customers $5 million a year. The park's 20 commercial river companies gross about $15 million.Environmentalists contest WAPA's figures and say the impact on individual customers would be small in any case."Nobody really knows the value of the dam's power, since it's usually mixed with other sources," says Birnbaum. "But there are other valuesΓÇöintangiblesΓÇöyou've got to consider in the equation. After all, this is the Grand Canyon."A destructive, outdated missionThe dam's critics note that the Bureau of Reclamation, WAPA and the Colorado River dams were authorized by Congress to attract settlers to the West by supplying plentiful irrigation water and, later, cheap electricity.Now, they say, that mission is outdated and continued federal subsidies are fueling the destruction of the region's scarce resources."Reclamation encourages the profligate waste of both water and power," says Bob Witzeman, conservation chair of the Maricopa Audubon Society in Phoenix.In addition to consuming some 85 percent of the West's water, farmers useprodigious quantities of electricity to pump that water onto their fields (although agriculture accounts for only a small fraction of total electricity use in the region).Witzeman adds that 68 percent of western farmlands are used to grow surplus crops heavily subsidized by taxpayers. He cites the case of Arizona, where the dominant crop is cotton."The 2,000 farmers in Arizona have an average net income of $205,000 ayear," he says. "It's welfare for the rich."Cotton farmers respond that without access to cheap water and power they might be forced out of business.The next stage in the battle over Glen Canyon Dam is the two environmental impact statements. The two documents will be coordinated but written separately, and most likely will be highly complex and hundreds of pages thick. Most observers expect the process to take at least five years.BuRec, however, is only allotting two years for its EIS. Steve Robinson, who is BuRec's project director, says Interior Secretary Lujan asked the agency to complete the EIS as quickly as legally possible. Robinson says he will hold scoping meetings next January and hopes to have a draft statement ready by 1991."That's an ambitious schedule," says Robinson, but he notes BuRec already has seven years of data accumulated from the Glen Canyon Environmental StudiesΓÇöthe $7 million study project that led to Lujan's decision to write an EIS.The WAPA EIS win be directed by Ken Maxey, deputy area manager in the agency's Salt Lake City office, and will be wider in scope, looking at allColorado River Storage Project dams and the effect power sales from those dams have on endangered fish and the environment.Scoping sessions are planned to start next February, but Maxey says he doubts he will be able to keep pace with BuRec.Brownridge, Dennis and Hinchman, Steve. "The Grand Canyon is Just Another Turbine." High Country News. 4 December 1989.</text>
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<text>Brownridge, Dennis and Hinchman, Steve. "The Grand Canyon is Just Another Turbine." High Country News. 4 December 1989.</text>
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<text>PIPING IN A BETTER LIFE: THE DAKOTAS FORGO THEIR DREAMS OF VAST IRRIGATION PROJECTS IN FAVOR OF SYSTEMS THAT DELIVER HIGH-QUALITY DRINKING WATER TO THOUSANDS OF FARMS AND RANCHESby Peter CarrelsBefore the WEB rural water pipeline arrived at Pat Dewald's farm in north central South Dakota, things looked bleak for the young farmer. His wells pumped only two gallons per minute. Especially vulnerable were Dewald's 300 head of cattle."It seemed like every other morning I'd walk out to check the well, to see if the water tanks were empty," recalls Dewald. If the tanks were empty Dewald would pull the well casing and clean the pipes of built up mineral and salt deposits. "That," he says, "was getting very old."Dewald's options were limited. "If WEB hadn't come along, I would have had to dig a deep artesian well," to look for cleaner and more abundant water, he explains.Drilling a new well would have cost more than $20,000. Instead, Dewald's minimum payment to WEB is $35 per month for 6,000 gallons of water. In the winter months he uses as much as 60,000 gallons each month. His monthly bill has never exceeded $100, even during those peak-use months.Dewald is one of thousands of South Dakota farmers who eke out a living with some of the most heavily mineralized groundwater in the country. Plentiful and high quality water has always been hard to find in the Dakotas. The people who settled here could barely drink what little water their wells could suck from the earth. People today buy chemicals by the truckload to try and soften their well water.WEBΓÇönamed for Walworth, Edmund and Brown, the three counties in the pipeline's original service areaΓÇö will end that. When finished, WEB will supply purified Missouri River water to up to 25,000 people and hundreds of thousands of cattle. The pipeline, which covers the central part of the state, is part of a growing network of spiderweb-like rural water systems that carry vast amounts of domestic water throughout South Dakota's thousands of square miles.But WEB is also important because it replaces a massive federal irrigation project that would have dumped that water, and much more, onto the land for irrigated agriculture.WEB water was originally part of the massive Pick-Sloan water project. Authorized in 1944 and built in the 1950s and 1960s, Pick-Sloan was designed to harness the unruly Missouri River: protect the large downstream cities from floods, produce cheap hydroelectric power, and provide plentiful and inexpensive water for irrigation of millions of acres of the arid Dakota and eastern Montana plains.But its most obvious result was to drown millions of acres of fertile Missouri River bottomlands and displace thousands of people and whole Indian tribes. Kansas City now enjoys the project's electricity and is projected from the Big Muddy's annual floods, but the project's irrigation units were boondoggles, most of which never got built (HCN, 10~7/86).WEB was built on the ashes of one of those units, the Oahe Irrigation Project in South Dakota, and it may mark the final abandonment of the dream of irrigated agriculture in South Dakota.WEB-for-OaheFor more than 30 years, until it was ironically halted in 1982, the Oahe Project held the attention of the state's water development establishment. The billion-dollar irrigation scheme was viewed as compensation owed South Dakota by the federal government for flooding over a half-million acres of Missouri River bottomland by Pick-Sloan.Unrelenting pressure from organized farm opposition, however, derailed Oahe. The farmers feared the expensive project would drive them out of business, and they were joined by local and national environmental groups, which claimed the project would damage wetlands, wildlife and water quality.In the end only a pump house and several miles of canal were completed. Cleverly, Oahe opponents did not simply call for the end of Oahe. They asked the federal government to fund construction of a rural water system that would serve both the proposed Oahe irrigation district and other areas desperate for drinking water.Just as the fight over Oahe was intensifying during the late 1970s, President Carter's staff at the Interior Department was searching for local support to back Carter's plan to cut federal water projects. His staff found in Oahe's grass-roots opponents.The notion of trading a federal promise to build a controversial irrigation project for a less expensive drinking water system appealed to Carter's staff Oahe was killed and north-central South Dakota got WEB.The notion of trading a federal promise to build a controversial irrigation project for a less expensive drinking water system applied to Carter's staff. Oahe was killed and north-central South Dakota got WEB.Although the WEB-for-Oahe trade brought greater attention to rural water systems in South Dakota, rural water supporters had been making quiet progress during the heated Oahe debate.Between 1974 and 1984, more than $250 million was spent in the state building rural pipelines. Twenty-five systems were either operational or under construction.But WEB is unique and immense. In fact, it is the largest project of its kind in the country. When completed, WEB will serve 5,245 square miles, an area larger than Connecticut."WEB is truly innovative because of its vast size," says Sam Wade, a spokesman for the National Rural Water Association.WEB also made it politically reasonable to replace plans for large, controversial irrigation development with domestic water pipelines. For example, when support for the CENDAK (Central Dakota) Irrigation Project sputtered, it was enthusiastically replaced by plans for the Mid-Dakota rural water pipeline.Because large irrigation projects have never materialized in South Dakota, the state's leaders are now asking that cheap Missouri River hydropower formerly reserved for irrigation development be transferred to domestic water delivery systems.Last summer, in a pact described by Gov. George Mickelson as a "major step forward," Midwest Electric Consumers Association agreed to allow the planned Mid-Dakota system to use discounted electricity previously held for irrigation. The reduced power costs will save Mid- Dakota $100,000 each year. Electric officials had traditionally protected cheap power for irrigation projects.The shift in water policy and projects makes economic and environmental sense, but it may mean an even greater improvement in the quality of life in South Dakota.The state has always had one strike against it when it comes to groundwater. The use of agricultural chemicals, which seep into the groundwater, has aggravated the initial problem. That is especially true in southeastern South Dakota, where agriculture is most intense.But even without agriculture, South Dakota has problems. "Generally speaking," says Mark Steichen of the state's Department of Water and Natural Resources, "South Dakota may have the most mineralized water in the nation."Heavy mineralization translates into foul-tasting water, corrosion of plumbing and appliances, stunted livestock, and higher calf mortality. Dairy herd production can also be diminished.In times of drought, stock dams and other water sources dry up, forcing livestock producers to ship their herds elsewhere. While providing water to people is important, state officials say that livestock watering is perhaps the greatest contribution of rural water systems. WEB alone will furnish water to over 600,000 cattle.Of the 32 rural water systems now operating in South Dakota, 30 received their share of federal funding through the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA).But WEB and a system not yet under way, the Mni Wiconi Pipeline, are being financed through the Bureau of Reclamation. FmHA spokesman, John Gutnmiller, says his agency has no complaints with the Bureau's involvement in rural water."WEB and Mni Wiconi are big systems," explains Guthmiller, "and we're not used to working with systems that expansive." Mni WiconiΓÇöwhich means "water for life" in LakotaΓÇöwill serve 20,000 people in the southwestern part of the state, including 12,000 on the Pine Ridge reservation.Building rural water systems is a new but not unwelcome challenge to the Bureau, whose role in water development has greatly changed in recent years. WEB was the first drinking water pipeline administered by the agency.According to Rod Ottenbreit of the Bureau's Billings, Mont., regional office, "We have to look at what the contemporary needs of the country are. If the need isn't for more irrigation systems, then we must find out what the need is for. Apparently, rural water systems are needed."The federal contribution to rural water systems is significant. The FmHA's Guthmiller says from 40 to 100 percent of a project's financing comes from federal money. WEB has received over $90 million from federal sources toward a total cost of approximately $105 million. State and local money are used to prove interest and commitment and to attract federal dollars. Usually federal funds make up about 90 percent of a project's costs.Although there is an exodus in South Dakota of farmers and ranchers to cities and towns, rural water systems have not reflected that trend."Not a single rural water system in the state has gotten smaller," says Dennis Davis. "They have all grown." Davis explains that abandoned farmsteads don't necessarily mean cancelled rural water taps. He says the supply to vacant homes is often maintained to continue watering livestockAnd despite economic woes, farmers loyally pay their rural water bills. "There is only a 1 percent delinquency rate on rural water bills in South Dakota," says Davis. "It proves how much people value their rural water systems."The news of that value has spread. Davis says nearly two-thirds of the state's land mass win be part of the rural water pipeline grid when current projects are completed. "We anticipate rural water systems will deliver water to about 210,000 people, nearly one-third of South Dakota's population."</text>
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<text>Carrels, Peter. "Piping in a Better Life." High Country News. 4 December 1989.</text>
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<text>Where's the beef? Displaying herd-like thinking typical of the media elite, cable television's Ted TurnerΓÇöhaving already cowed the national networks by introducing pop innovations such as the "Hollywood Minute" and colorization of old Bogart filmsΓÇöbrings his formidable powers of trivialization to ecological issues. Recently he awarded a prize for the best environmental propaganda novel, thus establishing a new (dubious) genre of American fiction. Now he has launched a range war against cattle, branding these bovines as land-destroyers.Speaking recently to the National Audubon Society, Turner announced he is banning cattle from his Montana ranch, replacing them with 7,000 bison (buffalo). Cattle, he said, are turning land into deserts by overgrazing.Apparently Turner thinks buffalo are incapable of such ecological felonies. But this is nonsense. They can do as much damage as cattle, given the chance. Indeed, Turner's ranch is a few miles from Yellowstone Park where overly abundant elk and bison have already eaten almost everything that photosynthesizes.Yet, however mistaken, Turner is doing a splendid job pushing the environmentalists' buttons. Trashing cattle has become a consuming obsession among granola munchers. But this posturing is more about Chardonnay conformism than about ecology.Although cows damage some ranges, exploding populations of wildlife do greater harm on public lands set aside for preservation. Using teeth like Weedeaters, deer and elk turn national parks into sand traps. And however bad overgrazing may be, saving both public and private lands cannot be accomplished by evicting herbivores. Foraging is good for range. Just as deer and cattle need grass, so grass needs deer or cattle. By trampling, ungulates accelerate decomposition of vegetation, thus recycling vital nutrients. Through defecation, they spread seeds and fertilizer.Preservation, therefore, requires establishing the right balance between ruminants and the range. If the balance is right, it does not matter whether the animal is wild or domestic. (As part of the effort to restore rainforest in Costa Rica's Guanacaste National Park, for example, the eminent ecologist Daniel Janzen uses domestic cattle as seed dispersers.)By contrast, ending grazing altogether can lead to rapid desertification. Lands left untrampled by hoofs develop a water resistant crust so that the soil absorbs less rain. Uneaten grasses remain standing after they are dead, locking up vital nutrients. Seed dispersal is slowed.The Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico demonstrates how much damage the lack of grazing can do. Off-limits to cattle for more than 15 years, Sevilleta is rapidly turning to desert. Meanwhile, pastures just outside the refugeΓÇöwhich have been grazed continuously ΓÇö remain healthy. In 1988 I was with a group of 50 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists who carefully verified this.Thus, an end to grazing won't save rangelands. Rather, distracted by this issue, activists miss a greater threat: the pernicious system of water laws known as the "prior appropriation" doctrine.Firmly established in most Western states, the concept of prior appropriation holds that water belongs to those who put it to commercial use. This means irrigators can drain creeks dry and cities may divert water great distances to fill swimming pools, but those who want water kept in streams for trout and otter have no right to do so. Thus, countless streams are sucked dry, killing most life in them.This perverse rule was introduced in the last century to encourage economic development. It replaced ancient riparian laws, which held that water belongs to those who own the stream banks. But whereas riparian laws kept water in streams, prior appropriation led to the system of dams, canals, viaducts and ditches that makes the West what it is today. Without prior appropriation California's Imperial Valley would have no avocados. Los Angeles would be smaller than Scarsdale.Today some groups lobby to change this law. One proposal would allow ranchers to lease in-stream flow rights to conservation groups; another would permit state conservation departments to claim water for wildlife. But reform, opposed by many hidebound ranchers, is coming slowly.So as the West is de-watered, many conservationists focus narrowly on antigrazing. They rail against cattle because they don't want cowpies on their favorite hiking trails. They ignore range decline in national parks because they want more trails. Firm believers that only the federal government can save nature, they fulminate against grazing on public landsΓÇöan issue that can be resolved by CongressΓÇö and ignore water rightsΓÇöa reform process requiring patient lobbying in state capitals. If they really wanted to restore the West to pristine beauty, they would seek to protect in-stream flow. Of course, this might require emptying swimming pools in Hollywood, Aspen and Sun Valley. But most environmentalists would be willing to make such a sacrifice. Wouldn't they?Chase, Alston. "Environmentalists Beef About Cows While West Sucked Dry." Syndicated Column in Albuquerque Journal. 11 August 1991. B3.</text>
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<text>Chase, Alston. "Environmentalists Beef About Cows While West Sucked Dry." Syndicated Column in Albuquerque Journal. 11 August 1991. B3.</text>
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<text>By Alston ChaseSYNDICATED COLUMNISTIt remains a shining moment in my memory: As a young boy in 1947, hiking alone high in Washington state's Cascade Mountains, I came upon a small stream teeming with bright red, spawning sockeye salmon. The water seemed solid with these gaudy but tragic creatures. Re-enacting the miracle of death and rebirth, they had traveled hundreds of miles and climbed thousands of feet to this secluded spot to spawn and die. I was a privileged witness to the miraculous fecundity of nature.Now most of these salmon are gone. The National Marine Fisheries Service, which has already recommended protection for the Snake River sockeye under the Endangered Species Act, recently proposed adding two stocks of chinook to the list as well The cause of their impending extinction is the system of hydroelectric dams that block migration routes. Fish ladders, designed to let salmon go upstream around these barriers, do not permit them to go downstream. These engineered devices are one-way escalators to anadromous oblivion.So salmon are spawning another endangered species brouhaha that may ruffle more feathers than spotted owls ever did. Their rescue will require increasing river flow by drawing down the reservoirsΓÇöa step many predict will dramatically raise the cost of electric power, immobilize the region's barge transportation system, and decimate Pacific Northwest agriculture.Whatever the outcome, both man and beast will suffer. Yet authorities had decades to foresee and avert this tragedy. Biologists were citing the dangers of Bonneville Dam in the 1930s. Grand Coulee Dam, built in 1941, eliminated all salmon upstream. When I was a boy, three dams spanned the Columbia; today there are around 150 obstructions to fish Each barrier kills between 5 percent and 14 percent of the smolt trying to reach the sea. Altogether more than 95 percent perishΓÇösome chewed up in electric turbines; others delayed in the reservoirs become victims of high water temperatures, disease or predators.Thanks to this carnage, the Snake River coho is extinct. Idaho's last salmon are disappearing. A century ago more than 16 million salmon and trout made the annual commute from sea to mountains and back; today fewer than 1 million take the trip. Scientists estimate that of some 400 original Columbia salmon and steelhead stocks (each stock representing the gene pool of a particular stream or river), 200 are already extinct and half the remainder are at risk.If a rescue had been tried earlier, it might have downs, better fish ladders and turbine bypass systems. But because authorities waited so long, nothing short of dynamiting the dams may save some salmon stocks now. This painful fix signals that our whole system of been done less painfullyΓÇöwith gradual draw-water management needs reform. The Columbia drainage is controlled not by conservation agencies, but by a huge bureaucratic empire that serves water users. Reigning over this river kingdom are the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (which builds the dams), the Bureau of Reclamation (which runs them) and the Bonneville Power Authority (which sells the power).For 50 years this gigantic empire shaped the region's economy. Providing subsidized electricity and water, it turned deserts into farmland, built an elaborate river-barge system and attracted power-hungry industries, such as aluminum manufacture.These industries still feed at the government tit. Now the government has created an economy that depends on the salmon's waters and that remains highly vulnerable to the draw-downs needed to save the species.James Fenimore Cooper wrote, "All is contradiction in the settlements; all is concord in the woods." But Cooper got it backward. It is the human desire for order that destroys the wonderful anarchy of nature. The Pacific Northwest power system, like the Tennessee Valley Authority, was a product of an era when American believed in central planning. Engineers were society's elite. Their skills ΓÇö constructing canals, dams, rockets and weapons of warΓÇöfit well within bureaucratic hierarchies. And by concentrating electric generation, these megadam projects also consolidated state power.The salmon remind us that this vision is bad for both humans and nature. Engineers are not ecologists. They may have known how to build fish ladders, but they didn't understand these ladders had to work in two directions.Today, world leaders, reacting to growing concern over radiation and global warming and attracted to gargantuan projects that extend their control over human populations, are increasingly infatuated with large dam projects that displace thousands of people and indundate entire ecosystems. Yet hydropower is the worst alternative. For while nuclear and coal generation pose possible risks to the environment, the ecological consequences of dams are immediate, certain and devastating.This June the "International Commission on Large Dams"ΓÇöan association of engineers founded in 1928ΓÇömeets in Vienna, Austria. Simultaneously, a newly formed opposition group, the "International Coalition against Large Dams," plans to hold a meeting there as well. Perhaps this confrontation will ignite a long-overdue debate over the wisdom of dams.Chase, Alston "Giant Hydroelectric River Dams Devastate Entire Ecosystems." Universal Press Syndicate. Albuquerque Journal. 16 June 1991. B3.</text>
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<text>Chase, Alston "Giant Hydroelectric River Dams Devastate Entire Ecosystems." Universal Press Syndicate. Albuquerque Journal. 16 June 1991. B3.</text>
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<text>By Margaret CheasebroJOURNAL CORRESPONDENTFARMINGTONΓÇöA study on how the Animas-La Plata Project would affect endangered fish might jeopardize the multi-million-dollar water project itself, San Juan Water Commissioners said in a resolution Monday.The study, proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a draft opinion, could take up to seven years. It would determine how Colorado squawfish might be affected by a reduction in San Juan River water flows if the Animas-La Plata Project were built.Danny Carpenter, who represents the San Juan County Commission on the water commission, said Rep. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., told him "maybe we could get this down to a year's study. I told him I'm afraid even a year's study would jeopardize the project. Other people want the money" allocated by the federal government for the project.Studying the project's effects on water flow is important, said Lief Ahlm, San Juan-Chama fisheries specialist for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, because squawfish need high and low river fluctuations to create backwaters in which they can spawn.But how much water they and other endangered species native to the Colorado River system need is uncertain."By the time scientists realized fish native to the Colorado River system were unique," Ahlm said, "many of them were gone. So we didn't get to study them or understand them."The project's $589 million first phase calls for pumping water from the Animas River into a proposed 280,000-acre-foot reservoir southwest of Durango, Colo., and releasing it when needed to people in the Animas and La Plata watersheds. Because the Animas is a major tributary to the San Juan River, Ahlm said the project could reduce water flow in the San Juan River by up to 18 percent, possibly threatening the squawfish's survival.In addition to possibly killing the Animas-La Plata Project, the water commission's resolution says, the study could terminate a compact that settles water rights claims by the Ute Mountain and Southern Ute Indian tribes.The resolution says the study also could result in the foreclosure of about 100,000 acre feet for future irrigation on 49,800 acres of land in the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project.In addition, it says, the study could prevent the marketing of about 12,000 acre feet of water from the San Juan-Chama Project, "which would affect the city of Albuquerque as well as other water users in the Rio Grande Basin.""The inability to put water to beneficial use," the resolution says, "would foreclose all future economic development in northwest New Mexico."The resolution will be sent to federal officials, including President Bush, Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr., and the New Mexico congressional delegation.Water Commission Chairman Jim Dunlap said the draft biological opinion becomes final June 22 unless there are amendments.Any amendments would have to go through a required comment period, which could take several months. He said people who attended a May 29 briefing on the Endangered Species Act in Durango suggested that a task force of Colorado and New Mexico residents be set up to provide technical information to the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the Interior Department about the validity of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's report.Cheasebro, Margaret. "Proposed Animas Study Rocks Boat: Officials Fear Effect on Diversion Project." Albuquerque Journal 5 June 1990. E3.</text>
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<text>Cheasebro, Margaret. "Proposed Animas Study Rocks Boat: Officials Fear Effect on Diversion Project." Albuquerque Journal 5 June 1990. E3.</text>
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<text>Clark, Ira G. "Water in New Mexico: A History of Its Management and Use. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1987.</text>
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<text> The author examines the history of water use and water policy in New Mexico. Some issues dealt with are land-grant water rights, effects of coal and uranium mining on water quality, the allocation of ground water, and federal-state conflicts over land and water.</text>
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<text>Clark, Ira G. "Water in New Mexico: A History of Its Management and Use. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1987.</text>
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<text> The author examines the history of water use and water policy in New Mexico. Some issues dealt with are land-grant water rights, effects of coal and uranium mining on water quality, the allocation of ground water, and federal-state conflicts over land and water.</text>
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<text>To the Editor:Is Northern Arizona going to be stripped of its trees and turned into a water collection funnel for Phoenix?Three hundred people showed up at Flagstaff City Council Chambers Tuesday night to hear a presentation on a controversial water study currently under way that could have an immense impact on the environrnent of Northern Arizona. Representatives of three state and federal, and regional agencies co-sponsoring the study came to defuse irate feelings on the part of Northlanders that the study is part of an attempt to cut thousands of trees in Arizona's mountains to make more water available for metro Phoenix. Instead of defusing the controversy, they set a match to it.Using his best bureaucrat-ese to lull the crowd into an unconscious stupor, Bart Ambrose of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service said: "It (the Arizona Water Resources Study) is not a plan to cut down trees in the forests of Arizona to increase water for Phoenix...It is a study to determine if vegetative management can increase water yields to downstream users." But Ambrose go into trouble when he tried to explain his string of euphemisms.What's vegetative management? Cutting down trees, Ambrose said, letting the cat out of the bag. Where will water yields be increased? In Phoenix, said Joe Wideman of the Northern Arizona Council of Governments (NACOG), another sponsoring agencyAmbrose's assurance that the subject of the controversy "is not a plan at all, it's a study without an implementation component," didn't fare much better.During the question-and-answer part of the meeting, Sharon Galbreath of the Sierra Club pointed out that this project has already moved beyond the study stage. In September, Salt River Project representatives succeeded in having the production of water for Phoenix considered as a factor in planning a timber sale on the Coconino National Forest south of Flagstaff. No one seemed to realize because of the mild way in which Galbreath dropped her bombshell, but at that point it was all over except for tearing down the goalposts. The bureaucrats had lost the battle to defuse the controversy 3 to 0.Other important points were made during the course of the meeting. State Rep. Karan English, Coconino County Supervisor Paul Babbitt and Flagstaff City Councilmember Hyatt Simpson pointed out that Northern Arizona is mistrustful of any project that comes out of Phoenix and amounts to transferring water from Northern Arizona to the desert south. And with good reason. Water that falls as snow and rain in the mountains around Flagstaff costs between $80 and $180 an acre foot just to get to the Flagstaff water treatment plant. That same water sells for $9 an acre foot (that's not a misprint) to Phoenix area irrigators. Phoenix residents can get an acre foot of treated water out of their tap for around $180. In Flagstaff we have to pay around $840 for the same amount of the same water.Why is water so cheap in Phoenix? Because we subsidize their excess with our tax dollars. All Americans do. Now rich valley developers are demanding that we subsidize their fountain spouting, swimming pool studded, golf course surrounded subdivisions with our forests. Three hundred Northern Arizonans who came to City Hall on Tuesday, and a lot of others who didn't don't like that idea. Neither do a lot of people in Phoenix. It's time we heard from all of them.What can people do to dry up this boondoggle?Write to your local, state and federal representatives and demand that the Arizona Water Resources Study be scrapped. Why waste $707,000 on studying something that Northern Arizonans will never allow to be implemented? (Send along a thank-you to English, Babbitt and Simpson for representing your interests Tuesday night).Ask that no new programs for subsidizing water for Phoenix and other valley cities be passed.Ask that all of your representatives push for legislation limiting growth in the Phoenix area to what the environment will support without laying waste to the rest of the state.And if they don't do it, vote them out of office.SincerelyDAN DAGGETConservation ChairPlateau Group of the Sierra ClubDagget, Dan. "Let's Flush This Water Study." Letters to the Editor. Arizona Daily Sun. Flagstaff, Arizona. 14 December 1989.</text>
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<text>Dagget, Dan. "Let's Flush This Water Study." Letters to the Editor. Arizona Daily Sun. Flagstaff, Arizona. 14 December 1989.</text>
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<text>By Anthony DellaFloraJOURNAL STAFF WRITERBernalillo County has awarded an emergency contract to a local consultant to study the environmental needs of the county.Former city Water Resources Director Paul Noland will study how the county might spend the revenues from a proposed one-eighth-cent gross receipts tax for environmental services.The county is considering imposing the tax on businesses in its unincorporated areas beginning July 1.Noland has until the end of the month to develop a five-year program for use of the tax revenues, and specifically research the status of water and sewer hookups to city lines in unincorporated parts of Bernalillo County.The contract is worth $4,300.The contract was approved by County Manager Alex Abeyta after bids were obtained by phone by the County Purchasing Department.Abeyta may approve contracts for less than $5,000 without commission approval.Environmental Health director Gene Clement presented a plan to the commission Feb. 5, focusing on the constlllction of new water and sewer systems in areas of the county where groundwater contamination has been found.At the meeting, however, Clement said he wanted to scrap the plan, and suggested using the estimated $1.3 million in annual revenues from the tax to fund water hookups to existing city lines for low-income residents in the South Valley.The commission deferred action on the tax measure. Commissioners Pat Baca and Patricia Cassidy said they wanted to see more details on how the money would be spent.Public Safety Division director Herb Hughes said Clement will still be involved in the planning process, but officials want someone who can devote full time to the project."It needs to be done in a concentrated way, very quickly," Hughes said."He (Noland) was in the citr water department, so he should be able to do that."Hughes said the county also wanted to get an outsider's viewpoint on the situation."It was done to get an objective new look at it," Hughes said. "All of us were so close to it."DellaFlora, Anthony. "County Water, Sewer Needs Under Study." Albuquerque Journal. 16 February 1991. E9.</text>
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<text>DellaFlora, Anthony. "County Water, Sewer Needs Under Study." Albuquerque Journal. 16 February 1991. E9.</text>
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<text>By ELLIOT DIRINGERSan Francisco ChronicleThe plight of an obscure fish known as the delta smelt is a telling illustration of how California's water shortage has sent economics and environmentalism into a head-on couision.With its population down 90 percent in the last 20 years, the small, bluish fish may soon be declared endangered. But the only way to save it from extinction may be to leave more fresh water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River DeltaΓÇöand that means less water for everyone else."We've already committed too much water to agriculture, and our cities are growing," said attorney Hal Candee of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "But if our fish and wildlife are to survive, they need more water, too."Someone, and that means agriculture, will have to give some back."The enormous attention commanded by the smelt and other wildlife, even as the state faces an era of perennial water shortages, is testament to nature's new-found clout.The environment, defended by a potent political movement and a slew of new laws, is today an equal player when it comes to deciding who gets water and how much.Anytime Californians clashed over water in the past century ΓÇö from the time Gold Rush miners began diverting mountain streams until the heyday of dam-building that ended just 20 years agoΓÇönature, with no money or votes of its own, was always the biggest loser.Although the shifting ecological balance has helped some species, such as salt-tolerant fish that have become more abundant in the delta, it has been a disaster for others.Salmon lost all but a fraction of their ancient spawning grounds, more than 90 percent of the state's wetlands disappeared, and some of what remained was so poisoned that thousands of birds wound updead or deformed.But the environment is no longer without a voice. Dozens of groups have rallied to its causeΓÇösome national organizations with teams of lawyers and scientists, others ad hoc bands of grass roots volunteers. Perhaps more important, the environment has become a bedrock issue with the public at large. Since 1972, when the North Coast's free-flowing rivers were declared "wild and scenic" so they could not be dammed, the rising environmental tide has effectively swamped every major attempt to expand the water supply with new dams and canals. Having managed to keep new projects at bay, environmentalists are going the next step: laying claim to some of the water already diverted so they can return it to those who had it first. "For l00 years, aquatic environments throughout California were sacrificed at the altar of water development," said Tom Graff of the Environmental Defense Fund. "Only in the last 20 years has the environment become a factor in how we allocate water. Now the challenge is to repair all the damage we've already wrought." The foundation was laid with a landmark state Supreme Court ruling in 1983. In a decision that has since led to an indefinite ban on Los Angeles' diversions from Mono Lake, the court held for the first time that "public trust" values like the environment must be protected, even if that means paring back water rights won long ago. Invariably, most any conllict over California's water leads back to the delta, the byzantine network of islands and channels at the heart of the system. That is where nature pools most of the runoff before it goes out to the bay and the sea beyond, and where the state and federal projects siphon off their share of about 6.5 million acre-feet a year. Day in and day out, the struggle between the state's thirst and its environment is perhaps nowhere more vivid. As they fill the aqueducts, the two banks of mammoth pumps at the delta's southern end also suck in millions upon millions of fish. Many perish, others wind up in faraway reservoirs, and the lucky are "salvaged" ΓÇö captured, put on trucks, and taken back upstream for a second chance. For years, the big worry has been the steady decline of the striped bass, a non-native fish and a favorite among anglers. Now, however, the delta smelt is taking center stage. The state Department of Water Resources and the agencies it supplies with delta water insist that the fish is in no danger of extinction. In hopes of keeping it off the endangered list, they are sponsoring $700,000 in studies to prove their case. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency that must evaluate the evidence, will issue a tentative decision by June. But even if the smelt is deemed healthy, other fish may still slow the pumps. Environmentalists say another dozen species that migrate through the delta are so bad off that they, too, should be declared endangered. "Our plan is to get them listed one at a timeΓÇöstart with the smelt and move on," said Peter Moyle, a University of California fisheries biologist who is one of those spearheading the fight for the fish. Diringer, Elliot. "Little Blue Fish Need a Share of Water." San Francisco Chronicle story in Albuquerque Tribune. 25 April 1991. C1. </text>
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<text>Diringer, Elliot. "Little Blue Fish Need a Share of Water." San Francisco Chronicle story in Albuquerque Tribune. 25 April 1991. C1. </text>
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<text>LAS CRUCES ΓÇö Two federal agencies will square off in Albuquerque today as dwindling water supplies pit the needs of farmers against those of bald eagles and other endangered species.At a closed meeting scheduled this afternoon, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will ask the Bureau of Reclamation to alter its management plans for the Rio Grande and the Pecos River. Fish and Wildlife officials will cite the Endangered Species Act in its request, while the bureau is backed by other federal laws that direct that its dams and facilities benefit irrigated farming."This is the first shot from us across their bow," said Chuck Mullins, a biologist in the Fish and Wildlife ecological services division.The wildlife agency is concerned drought-related operating plans will affect bald eagles that feed at Caballo Lake on the Rio Grande south of Truth or Consequences and threaten endangered fish species in the Pecos. The reclamation agency earlier announced plans to store Caballo water upstream at Elephant Butte Lake to save an estimated 20,000 acre-feet of water that other wise would be lost to evaporation.On the Pecos, irrigators plan to draw lakes near Santa Rosa, Fort Sumner and Carlsbad down to minimal levels. Farmers in the Carlsbad Irrigation District, whose normal allotment is three acre-feet of water a season, have been told to expect only 0.8 acre-feet this year.An acre foot, the amount of water. that would cover one acre to a depth of one foot, is 325,851 gallons. The bureau, citing lack of upstream snowpack, is expecting 24 percent of the average inflow into Elephant Butte Lake this spring."Our authorization from Congress is for irrigation," said Dan Page, superintendent of the bureau's Rio Grande Project. "We recognize our obligation under other federal laws not to do anything that harms endangered species. We're not sure at this point how our operations affect fish and wildlife."Managers of the Carlsbad and Elephant Butte irrigation districts said they weren't aware of today's meeting.Directors of the Carlsbad district decided for environmental and political reasons to maintain a pool of about 2,000 acre-feet at Santa Rosa. In recent wet years, the lake held about 90,000 acre-feet, but it has only about 20,000 acre-feet this year, he said.The lake, built for flood control, has been drained in the past without killing off endangered species downstream, Davis said.ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL April 11, 1990FEDERAL AGENCIES READY TO BATTLE OVER RIVER WATERBy Bill Diven</text>
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<text>Diven, Bill. "Federal Agencies Ready to Battle over River Water." Albuquerque Journal. 11 April 1990.</text>
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<text>BOOK REVIEWSPERSPECTIVES ON ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENTFOR THE GREAT LAKES: A READERLYNTON K. CALDWELL, ed.New York: State University of New York Press. 1988.Breaking with precedent in 1978, and reinforced in 1988, the UnitedStates and Canada expanded the original 1972 Water Quality Agreementto protect and enhance the water quality of the Great Lakes based on theecosystem approach to management.In January 1985, the International Joint Commission IIJC] advised thetwo governments that "To provide a broader and more appropriate contextwithin which to address the longer-term prospects tor the use of GreatLakes water, it seems desirable to consider a wider range of issues...."They included among these, "the need to consider the interrelationshipof the Greak Lakes water quantity ana' water quality in the context of anecosystem, including the other than economic importance of this vastbody of water to the millions of people who live and will live in thebasin. "Under the Agreement of 1972, expanded in 1978, the ecosystem wasdefined in general terms to mean "the interacting components of air, land,water, and living organisms including man...." But, the Agreementwhich included this definition was confined to water quality and therelationships to it. The intent of the Advisory was to broaden the definitionto apply to a larger frameworkΓÇöa larger ecosystem.A broader Great Lakes ecosystem has in fact evolved over the years,and is defined by the activities of the two governments. These include,among other matters: boundary agreements; institution building; agree-ments on levels and flows; fisheries; scenic resources, water allocationfor hydropower; air quality in the Windsor-Detroit area; and water quality.These introductory notes show that the two senior governments ulti-mately responsible for the management of the international Great Lakeshave adopted the concept of ecosystem managementΓÇömanagement to-ward the whole for the issue of Great Lakes water quality. They alsoshow that the IJC, the principal agent used by the two governments toresolve disputes on boundary issues, has recommended to the two gov-ernments that the concept be extended to a much wider array of man-agement issues. Finally, they show that the wider ecosystem to be managedhas evolved from the activities in which the governments have alreadybeen involved.The concern of Editor Lynton Caldwell and his colleagues in producingthe Reader is that there is both little understanding supportive of a basin-wide ecosystem management arrangement, and little progress made inimplementing the ecosystem concept through practical applications.In his introduction, Caldwell comments that under present circum-stances of politics and public opinion, "an ecological approach . . . isan innovation that requires a phased undertaking to achieve effectiveimplementation . "Important management issues are:1. scientific assessment of conditions and trends2. finding scientific or technical measures to deal with problems;3. considering problems of law, politics, and economics to be over-come in putting these measure into effect; and4. developing a public constituency in support of an ecosystem ap-proach.Ten papers (under nine numbers) follow Caldwell's excellent intro-duction of the problems associated with implementing ecosystem man-agement of the Great Lakes specifically, but which has application generally.They all address, in varying ways, the common themesΓÇöthe implemen-tation of existing binational agreements. The papers focus on differingaspects of the managerial problems and represent authors' particular view-points. Their purposes, and the purpose of the book, "is to stimulatepublic interest, to provide information regarding the ways the Lakes arebeing . . . protected, and to assist the growth of public understanding onboth sides of the boundary waters regarding the common interest insafeguarding (this) valuable but vulnerable asset."The paper covers:ΓÇó A discussion of the ecosystem approach and a proposal for an im-plementing strategy, including a brief note on the history of the adoptionof the approach by the two governments.ΓÇó A thirty year (1955-1985) comprehensive overview of Great Lakesmanagement including policy, economic and geographic data; a chro-nological table of Great Lakes events; and a tabular comparison of the1972 and 1978 Agreements.ΓÇó An up-to-date detailed audit and critique of present institutionalarrangement for Great Lakes management and and analysis of factors thattend to inkibit the implementation of an ecosystem approach.ΓÇóA proposal for a process of social learning to achieve institutional innovationfor Great Lakes management recognizing the size, complexity and noveltyof ecosystem management in the face of uncertainty.ΓÇó A status report on the implementation of the ecosystem approach todate in the Great Lakes and an indication of where remedial action isneeded to achieve rehabilitation of the lakes.ΓÇó A unique report which describes itself as "a distinctly different wayof describing the common theme." The ecosystem approach is examinedfrom an historical, literary, folkloric point of view, leaning heavily on"allegory (which) often provides a quicker avenue to insight than thatreached by linguistically more straight-forward routes."ΓÇó The next two papers diverge, in one respect, from a concern forcomprehensive management on an ecosystem basis by concentrating ontwo highly sensitive political issuesΓÇödiversion of Great Lakes watersoutside the basin, and legal and economic aspects of ownership andcontrol. Both of these have important implications for ecosystem man-agement and involve broad questions of policy.ΓÇó The assessment of the ecosystem approach by the Royal Society ofCanada-U.S. National Research Council report of 1985 is analyzed indepth in this paper. A major issue implicit in the report is the nature ofthe institutional arrangements needed for ecosystem implementation.ΓÇó The concluding paper summarizes the issues and problems of thevolume, noting the growing acceptance of the principle of an ecosystemapproach, but few signs of implementation in practice. It proposes thatbasin-wide ecological matters need not wholly depend on government;that organized non-governmental actors, too, may answer the question:Where next?Water resource management has had to contend historically with thenonconformity of natural water systems and governing political institu-tions. As a result, institutional innovation has become a common- placematter to consider in such management efforts. It is clear that ecosystemmanagement will demand similar consideration if implementation is tobe effected. While the latter tasks are complex, the Federal Systems ofCanada and the United States have shown resiliency to meet earlier chal-lenges of this sort. The papers contained in the Reader will be of sub-stantial assistance in helping to determine, Where next?LEONARD B. DWORSKYProfessor (Emeritus)Cornell University</text>
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<text>Dworsky, Leonard B. Natural Resources Journal. University of New Mexico School of Law. V.29 N.3. Summer 1989. Pp 895-897.</text>
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<text>By Virginia EllisLOS ANGELES TIMESSACRAMENTO, Calif.ΓÇöDuring the first four years of the 1987-91 drought, the state delivered more water to California farms and cities than in any other four-year period in its history, state records show.In that same time span, reservoir levels dropped to some of their lowest points everΓÇöuntil finally, the State Water Project practically ran bone-dry this year.While state officials have consistently blamed Mother Nature for the unprecedented drought, they are increasingly facing criticism for contributing to the crisis by releasing massive amounts of water just when many believed it was essential to bank it in storage.State documents show they made the decision knowing that if there was a prolonged dry period, they could be risking drastic shortages in the later years of the drought. Moreover, critics point out they failed to come up with an emergency plan to provide water should that happen."It's inaccurate to say this (drought) is purely a function of precipitation. The severity of the crisis is simply the result of mismanagement (and) a conscious decision made by state bureaucrats," said Thomas J. Graff, a senior attorney for the Oakland, Calif.based Environmental Defense Fund.State water authorities angrily dispute the charge, saying they were only trying to squeeze as much water as possible out of a system that was increasingly unable to meet the demands of a growing urban population and expanding agricultural economy. Without a crystal ball, they said, they had no way to foresee they entering a severe drought."I guess it just strikes me that people have an amazing ability to see things into the future that we can't see," Department of Water Resources Director David Kennedy said. "If they knew we were going to have five years (of drought) I wish they'd have told us about it."Typically, in the early 1980s, the State Water Project delivered an average of 1.7 million acre feet of water a year to cities and farms, mostly in Southern California. An acre foot is about 326,000 gallons, or enough to cover one acre to the depth of a foot.But in 1987, a year classified as critically dry, deliveries from the State Water Project rose to 2.1 million acre feet. In 1988, a year that also became critically dry, 2.4 million acre feet of water flowed from the project to the cities of Southern California and the farms of the San Joaquin Valley in Central California. By 1989, when drought conditions eased enough for the year to be classified as just dry, the water deliveries hit their highest level everΓÇö2.8 million acre feet.The next year was the fourth year of the drought and again critically dry. But even with a 50 percent reduction in the water supplied to agriculture, deliveries reached 2.6 million acre feet.As the water spilled into the California Aqueduct on its way to farms and cities, storage in the state's two major reservoirs ΓÇö Oroville on the Feather River and San Luis south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River DeltaΓÇödeclined rapidly. At the end of the water season in 1986, some 3.6 million acre feet of water was held in the reservoirs for the next year. By the Sept. 30 close of the 1990 water year, there was only 1.3 million acre feet left.Although no one accuses state officials of creating the drought, many environmentalists and some elected officials are now saying the decision to let reservoir storage fall so low exacerbated the hardship suffered by the State Water Project's agricultural and municipal customers.When 1991 rainfall turned out to be well below normal, creating another critically dry year, there was so little reserved in storage water project deliveries had to be cut drastically. Agriculture got no water and cities were cut back 80 percent, forcing many local governments to adopt mandatory rationing."It's easy to criticize now and say (state officials) should have been more conservative because it's obvious that they should have," state Assemblyman Richard Katz said. "I think the problem, though, is attitudinal. They view themselves as being able to tame the beast."The water project and the contractors are going to do what they want, no matter what nature dictates. And nature doesn't play by their rulesΓÇöand they got caught."The decision to deliver huge amounts of water during the early years of the drought had its roots in the mid-1980s when the department, under pressure from its contractors to fulfill their requests for water, made a dramatic philosophical change in its approach to the management of the State Water Project.Until then, the project had been managed conservatively with rules established after the 1976-77 drought that were designed to provide protection for a prolonged and severe dry spell.But by the mid-80s when officials were faced with the increasing demands for water and limited supplies to meet them, they decided they could milk more out of the project in most dry years by adopting a riskier operating strategy that required them to hold less in storage.They reasoned that if they drew reservoirs down in one or two dry years, a wet year was likely to follow that would replenish them. Using historical data as a guide, officials justified the new approach by pointing out that most California droughtsΓÇöexcept for a dry period from 1928 to 1934ΓÇöwere typically of short duration."Basically we've got greater demands than we've got supplies," I Kennedy said. "What we've done is i set out a year-by-year scenario based on probability and the probability is that . . . if you've had four dry years, statistically you're unlikely to have a fifth."If you go through the numbers and try and be as rational as possible in terms of statistics, you have a gradually diminishing statistical probability of the drought continuing."The new operating procedure had the enthusiastic support of the State Water Contractors, including its biggest urban member, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California."The benefits more than outweigh the increased risk," said the group's then-general manager, David Schuster, in a letter to Kennedy. "The contractors are willing to assume the risk associated with thenew (procedure)."Ellis, Virginia. "Environmentalists Blame California Drought on Officials." Los Angeles Times story in the Albuquerque Journal. 5 May 1991. F8.</text>
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<text>Ellis, Virginia. "Environmentalists Blame California Drought on Officials." Los Angeles Times story in the Albuquerque Journal. 5 May 1991. F8.</text>
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<text>By Pat FordJohn Osborn, Idaho's hardest working conservation volunteer, had just returned from the Little North Fork of the Clearwater River."It's grim," he told me on the phone. "There's a lot of new road in just the last month, and sediment is pouring off the Burlington Northern land."The Little North Fork of the Clearwater lies where Idaho's narrow Panhandle begins its long bulge south. This is steep, remote, forested country, with north Idaho's best backcountry elk hunting and, until recently, fine west slope cutthroat trout fishing. Until recently it had few roadsΓÇöa measure, here in Idaho's historic timber country, of how remote it is.Today it's changing fast, as the two landowners build roads and cut timber. The Clearwater National Forest does most of the roading and Burlington Northern most of the cutting. As part of its Northwest-wide forestland liquidation, BN is clearcutting its checkerboard sections in the Little North Fork, making the map pattern real on the Found.Each time Osborn has visited over the last two years, there are new roads, newly shorn slopes, and more mud in the streams. "The upper watershed is gone," he says. Sediment levels in streambottom gravels of the logged creeks are up to 90 percent."The bigger tributaries in the middle reach, the ones we're proposing forwilderness, are what's left. And BN and the forest both are going in there as soon as they can."About 350 miles southeast as the crow fliesΓÇötwice that as the car drivesΓÇölies the upper Blackfoot River."My dad ran sheep there when I was a kid," says Jim Gabettas, who runs atackle shop in nearby Idaho Falls. "It was an outstanding cutthroat stream in the '40s and '50s." Then came overgrazing and riparian alteration."Today it's just fair," he says. "There aren't many around who knowwhat it used to be like."The Blackfoot's headwaters are on public land near the Wyoming border, but most of it winds through pasture and meadow on ranches in the high, dry valley above Blackfoot Reservoir."The meadows were tall grass and willows, with grass over the riverbanks," Gabettas remembers. "Then over time the owners killed the willows to get more open ground. Grazing beat down the banks. Now the shade and cover are gone, and sagebrush is taking over the meadows. You've got a lot fewer and a lot smaller fish."River defenders speak upTwo Idaho rivers with different times, paces and agents of change. But both still have fish, thus users, thus lovers and defenders.And, perhaps, a new hope for defense. This July, Osborn and Gabettas joined some 800 other Idahoans at eight crowded public meetings around the state, held to "solicit public input on water quality." Osborn went to meetings in Coeur d'Alene; Gabettas traveled 500 miles southeast to Idaho Falls.At those meetings and by mail, 4,300 one-page forms nominating streams for special water quality protections were submitted to the Idaho Water Quality Bureau.Gabettas handed in six, for the upper Blackfoot River and its major tributaries. Osborn nominated the upper reaches and tributaries of the Little North Fork of the Clearwater River.What they were doing depends on your perspective. They were helping launch one of the nation's first coherent efforts to implement the Clean Water Act's most difficult and oft-ignored sectionsΓÇönonpoint pollution control and anti-degradation.They were also starting the action phase of a landmark negotiated settlement among Idaho water users and polluters.But to their own thinking, they were just continuing, intently and without illusions, personal efforts to stop or slow the decline of waters they care about.This latest stage started on Sept. 7, 1988, when a crowd filled the office of Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus."This is a great day for our state," he told the battery of cameras, tape recorders and reporters. "We've proven that Idahoans can sit down and reason together without constant resort to adversarial approaches. It's a model for future cooperation."Seven men and one woman stood, not altogether comfortably, behind him ΓÇö leaders of the Idaho Mining Association, Idaho Farm Bureau, Idaho Forest Industry Council, Wilderness Society, Idaho Conservation League, Idaho Sportsmen's Coalition, and Nezperce Tribe.Under Andrus' insistent aegis, they had pieced together over five months a 13-page agreement framing how nonpoint pollution from logging, mining and agriculture would be regulated in Idaho.Those five months followed a six-year treadmill, featuring several previous negotiations ending in bitter collapse, two gubernatorial vetoes of industry-written legislation, typical start-stop-switch-stall ballots by the Reagan-eraEnvironmental Protection Agency and Idaho's Water Quality Bureau, and,finally, an October 1987 federal lawsuit by Idaho conservation groups to force action.Recounting it in detail would only stir bad memories for those involved and be utter Greek to all the others. It's a standard tale of Rocky Mountain politics and muddle in the 1980s.Andrus' achievement, once the lawsuit forced him to move, was to get something done. He put the regulators on the sidelines and hired a professional mediator. He told both sides that the first group to walk out or sabotage the talks would find Cecil Andrus on the other side from then on. And he wrote himself into the agreement as referee of future disputes.The agreement itself reflects both the political landscape of Idaho and the nature of nonpoint source pollution. It is complicated, ambiguous, uneven, and defers most tough decisions. When announcing it, neither Andrus nor the negotiators explained its substance, and both seemed relieved when no reporter asked.Now, a year later and with a million doIlars from the 1989 Legislature tokick-start it, implementation has begun.Water quality was the issueTurnout at the July public meetingsΓÇöstep one of the pactΓÇösurprised nearly everyone. Some 175 people attended in Boise, about the same in Coeur d'Alene, and even in tiny Challis 30 people showed up.Will Whelan, lobbyist and water specialist for the Idaho Conservation league, says the turnout mirrors the public mood."People care about water quality," he says. "And having a voice in decidingwhat waters matter most is important to them."How much of a voice varies. The most protection the agreement affords is for "outstanding resource waters." Once a stream or lake is designated an outstanding resource, essentially no water quality degradation can occur.The citizen role is traditional: people or groups can petition to nominate a stream, and must then lobby the Idaho legislature to grant the designation.Industry negotiators insisted on leaving it to the Legislature to create outstanding resource waters. It means few will be created for at least the near future.Most action will occur at the next levelΓÇö"stream segments of concern"ΓÇöwhere nonpoint polluting activities threaten instream values, like fishing orrecreation. Nomination forms were passed out at the public meetings, and4,300 were returned by the deadline a month later.Some played by the rules: Jim Gabettas submitted six detailed forms, one for each specified segment of the upper Blackfoot and its tributaries. Others simply nominated, for instance, the whole Snake River Basin on one form."Now the seven negotiators, four federal and four state agencies, are sitting down with those forms," says Whelan. "We have to decide, by consensus, which nominations to accept and which not. Where we can't agree, we turn the stream over to Gov. Andrus, and he decides."The industries and their agency allies will seek to minimize segments of concern, conservationists and their allies to maximize. No one is predicting how many are chosen or bucked to Andrus. The goal is to finish by December 1989.For streams not made outstanding resources or segments of concern, the formal process and public role are put on hold for two years, when the public meetings recur, and people can promote their streams again.On paper, the waters of unchosen streams must still be protected for existing uses. But realistically, the monitoring required to make such judgments will barely cover chosen streams."Any non-point control scheme, much more than point source control rides on choices," says an EPA staffer. "Idaho is choosing where to focus very limited time and money." And people may not yet realize where not to focus.Attention will be paidThe Little North Fork Clearwater will probably get some of that attention. Its roadless portion drains the proposed Mallard-Larkins Wilderness, Idaho's biggest flashpoint between loggers and conservationists. Its classic west slope cutthroat trout fishery is suffering from sedimentation. Its checkerboard private land is being almost completely clearcut as part of Burlington Northern's controversial liquidation.John Osborn, among others, made sure it got a lot of nominations.If it is chosen as a stream segment of concern, sometime early next year, a Little North Fork local working committeeΓÇönamed by the state working group, representing all the stream's users and landownersΓÇöwill begin meeting.As Whelan explains, "The Little North Fork committee will establish a water quality goal for the streamΓÇöno degradation, degradation to a specified level, or some mixΓÇöand for any designated tributaries. It will then develop site-specific best management practices for the stream, and decide where they apply. It will monitor their application as roads are built or timber cut, and change them if instream monitoring shows they aren't meeting the goal."In other words, the Little North Fork committee, and its fellows on other streams in Idaho's timber country, will do the real, tough, long work. It will operate by consensus, with unresolved disputes kicked up to the governor.Will there be disputes? Joe Hinson of the Idaho Forest Industry Council says, "I think things will go pretty smoothly out on the ground. Plum Creek (BN's timber arm) wants to protect water quality. We'll have to deal with some public confusion that the segment of concern designation is a preservation device."That's not true, he says, Designation carries a presumption that timber activities will occur."John Osborn says, "If I'm on that committee, my mind will be on halting logging on those damaged checkerboard ownerships. The feeder streams are loaded with sediment. Our only hope is logging and road reductions. The committee must be prepared to protect what's leftΓÇöif any is by the time they start meeting."The Little North Fork does have one thing many segments of concern will not: established instream monitoring. BN's clearcutting led Idaho's Water Quality Bureau to begin measuring both logged and pristine feeder streams two years ago. That data will give the river's working committee a big jump on the many others responsible for unmonitored streams.Upper Blackfoot needs helpJim Gabettas has a different creature on the Upper Blackfoot River. The river needs restoration, not just protection. It flows largely through private land. There is no dramatic controversy, just slow decline. Its friends are few. If the Blackfoot makes it as a stream segment of concern, it will do so just barely.Gabettas has a modest goal: "My hope, if we get the designation, is to set up good monitoring, and nail down the status and problems. Moving from there to do something about itΓÇöwell, that will be hard."It will be hard because, for streams affected by agriculture, the agreement resembles the Cheshire Cat. The only requirement for an ag-impacted segment of concern is that the local Soil Conservation District assess its water quality.Projects to do something can be developed, but landowner participation is voluntary. The agency and industry presumption is that local working committees will not form on streams affected by agriculture.Agriculture's soft duty reflects Idaho's politicsΓÇöfarming and ranching is industry number oneΓÇöas well as the conservation community's deliberate decision in the negotiations to use their chits on timber.Agriculture is Idaho's major nonpoint polluter by far, but that very scale, and the thousands of operators involved, discourage any reform efforts at all.Another problem is that few people recall when the streams and rivers of the Snake River Plain were anything but degraded. The agreement treats mining about the same as agriculture, due in part to the relatively better shape of Idaho's dredge and surface mining laws after a grassroots campaign in the mid-1980s.On the Blackfoot and similar streams, fishermen are considering forming their own, unofficial working committees, as a way to foster publicity and public awareness."I don't have a lot of hope this process can turn ag degradation around," Gabettas concludes. "But if it can increase people's attention to the river, that's a step."Idaho takes the leadIt seems odd that this halting, imperfect agreement puts Idaho on the leading edge of nonpoint pollution regulation in the West. But that is what an EPA staffer says has happened."Apple pie policy but not much on the ground is the tradition in nonpoint," says one. "Idaho is leading not so much in what it's doing, but the fact that it's doing something."For this federal regulator, Idaho's imperfect progress seems a big step. After decades of no nonpoint regulation, Western states moved first to best management practicesΓÇöusually general, weak, ill-enforced prescriptive guidelines applied to each industry.Only lately have conservationists and fishermen, armed with the Clean Water Act, begun insisting that specific instream criteria, such as sediment, and comprehensive monitoring, drive non-point regulation.They are also insisting that high-quality waters remain undegraded, and that degraded waters get cleaned up.How is the practical question, and Idaho will be among the first states to tryto define numerical yardsticks for health and harm on not just one stream, but for an entire state. Nor can choices be evaded. All streams can't be monitored, all pristine waters preserved, all degraded waters cleaned up or all polluting uses treated the same.A relative handful of Idaho conservationists made a big choice right out of the boxΓÇöthat timber streams would get the real attention and most of the money from this agreement. Now a larger but still modest number will make the next tier of choices. At each tier, losersΓÇöstreams and usersΓÇöwill outnumber winners.No wonder Gabettas and Osborn are wary about results.Ford, Pat. "Idaho Points The Way to Stream Quality." High Country News. 4 December 1989.</text>
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<text>Ford, Pat. "Idaho Points The Way to Stream Quality." High Country News. 4 December 1989.</text>
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<text>Imagine yourself standing in front of a bank of buttons and flashing lights, radios and telephones. Overhead is a television screen flanked by large maps of the Valley irrigation system. A man, seated at the computer console, is talking to someone on a two-way radio. He turns and presses one of the buttons before him and the television screen lights up with numbers.As you watch, he silently presses buttons on the console and you realize he is raising a canal gate somewhere in the Valley, increasing the water flow miles away.You think of Jack Swilling and his shovel, digging ditches in the sun. ..the Hohokam and their stone hoes. This is what the pioneers dreamed of and worked so hard to achieve...stable, reliable water. Controlled water. Measured water.This electronic control system, called supervisory control, was installed on the Project's 13 I-mile canal network by 1974. The system makes it possible for an operator to change canal gate levels by fractions of an inch. As a result, the water tlow can be carefully measured and controlled, reducing water losses.Before the installation of supervisory control, changes at canal gates were made manually by SRP zanjeros who had to drive from gate to gate.IRRIGATION DISTRICTS OUTSIDE THE PROJECT BOUNDARYNearly all the settlers in the Valley were served by Project water. However, as population grew, more and more acres outside the SRP territory were developed. In order to get water for areas outside of the Project, other irrigation districts were formed by the landowners.Water for these irrigation districts comes from different sources, depending on the resources in their areas. These resources include groundwater, reduction in seepage losses and rights due to prior use of water from the Salt River. Some districts depend on reservoirs on other rivers such as the San Carlos reservoir on the Gila, in southeastern Arizona, or Lake Pleasant on the Agua Fria River, west of the Valley.Gift From the Hohokam. Publication of the Salt River Project. P.O. Box 52025. Phoenix, Arizona 85072-2025.</text>
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<text>Gift From the Hohokam. Publication of the Salt River Project. P.O. Box 52025. Phoenix, Arizona 85072-2025.</text>
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<text>In 1950, the Project began a long-range program to modernize the canal and lateral water distribution system. This program, which is still underway, is designed to reduce water losses which result from seepage and evaporation. To do this, the Project is installing concrete lining in canals and lining or piping laterals and distribution ditches.Another conservation program was begun in 1964 when SRP and the U.S Forest Service signed a 25-year cooperative watershed management agreement. The agreement covers the five national forests within the 13,000 square mile area which is the source of water for the Salt and Verde rivers.This program was established because runoff into SRP reservoirs has lessened through the years. This decrease is not the result of less rainfall on the watershed. It is the result of poor soil conditions and increasing density of scrub and brush of a type which use great quantities of water for growth.As man has controlled fires and floods on the watershed, nature's technique for brush removal and tree thinning was eliminated. Watershed management was developed, after years of research, to fill the gap.Gift from the Hohokam. Publication of the Salt River Project. P.O. Box 52025. Phoenix, Arizona 85072-2025.</text>
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<text>Gift From the Hohokam. Publication of the Salt River Project. P.O. Box 52025. Phoenix, Arizona 85072-2025.</text>
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<text>DESCRIPTION iv, 54 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. NOTES Miscellaneous report / New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute ; no. 15 Includes bibliographical references. Summary: New Mexico, as a pioneer in water rights, has set the standard for water rights law throughout the Southwest. Today, the State Engineer Office remains the expert caretaker of New Mexico's water rights. Because water is crucial to the state's livelihood, every New Mexican should have an understanding of how the state's most precious resource is managed. This publication is written with the layman in mind. The purpose is not to make you a water rights expert, but to help you understand more about the history, the laws and the administration of New Mexico's water rights. SUBJECTS 1. Water rights --New Mexico. 2. Water --Law and Legislation --New Mexico. LOCATION Albuquerque Planning Department General Collection. Non-circulating CALL NUMBER KFN3723 W2 H37 1984 </text>
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<text>Harris, Linda G. " New Mexico Water Rights." Las Cruces, N.M. : New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute, 1984.</text>
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<text>Foreword by Congressman Morris K. UdallEnactment of the Colorado River Basin Project Act in 1968 was a milestone. By authorizing construction of the Central Arizona Project (CAP), the act was a giant step in Arizona's long quest to use its share of the waters of the Colorado River. More significantly, as this book makes clear, it marked a turning point in the politics of western water development.In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the federal government built, or committed itself to build, big dams and irrigation projects on nearly every major river system in the arid West. In the eyes of Congress and the Executive Branch and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the general public, big water projects were almost by definition good for the country. However, the social, political, and economic upheavals of the 1960s, which wrought great changes in our attitudes toward govemment, the environment, and ourselves, also changed the attitudes toward water development. These changes in turn resulted in new people and groups emerging and altering the dynamics of water development.In her 1969 book Pattern of Politics in Water Resource Developtnent: The Role of New Mexico in the Colorado River Basin Bill, Helen Ingram skillfully examined the interplay of issues, interests, and personalities that produced the compromises that enabled the bill to pass. Among other things, her examination found New Mexico's role in the process to reflect an unraveling of the political consensus that had been the foundation of the dam-building era. At the time, however, it was not clear how or whether the elements of that old consensus would be rearranged. The future was, as it usually is, in doubt. Now, twenty years later, Ms. Ingram has updated that analysis of the nascent trends in water development. This new work, Water Politics: Continuity and Change, offers fresh insight into the evolving dynamics of western water policy.Ingram, H. (1990) "Water Politics: Continuity and Change." Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press.</text>
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<text>Ingram, H. (1990) "Water Politics: Continuity and Change. Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press.</text>
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<text>By Rene Kimball JOURNAL STAFF WRITER PULLING A LOADED HORSE trailer, Rex Salvador's pickup bumps down a gravel road running through the Acoma Pueblo's Bar 15 ranch, a spread stretched among rose colored mesas along the Arroyo Colorado. From time to time, he points across the green range to a new water tank or the earthen reservoirs he and ranch hand Alvin Lewis dug with a Caterpillar.More places for cattle to drink mean Salvador can move the animals often among the ranch's pastures. That way, he can carry out his plan to bring back the grasses and brush that were overgrazed on parts of the ranch when he took over in 1986. "When I first saw this place, I got kind of upset because it was overgrazed and the water wasn't developed," Salvador said. "I've made quite a few improvements to take care of the place." The improvements haven't gone unnoticed. Salvador, Bar 15's manager, and Acoma Pueblo have gathered a couple of the state's top grazing awards in the last two years. The Bar 15 received this year's federal Bureau of Land Management award for grazing excellence and a similar award last year from the Society for Range Management. The ranch includes a 46,000-acre chunk of federal BLM land, 11,000 acres of state land and nearly 14,000 acres of pueblo land. Moving cattle means lots of work, but Salvador said it's the only way to maintain the land as it should be. He describes the typical day: "Start pretty early, especially if we have to move some cattle. Quit pretty late." He keeps that schedule five days a week, then returns to his family home in Acomita on weekends. Salvador and Lewis belong to the Acoma tribe. Salvador said he spent most of his adult life working in the uranium mines near Grants until they shut down. He'd raised a few head of cattle and sheep on his own over the years, but was new to ranch management when he was hired for the job four years ago.He said he's learned as he's worked, taking advantage of grazing management seminars when he can, and studying range grasses on his own, observing how they grow so he'll know when it's time to move the cattle off one pasture that's reached its grazing limit. Also working with the BLM, the Acomas installed a piping system on the ranch's southern edge to move water from a year-round spring. The BLM is calling the Bar l5 a "grazing showplace" where agency officials hope to take tours to counter increasing pressure from anti-grazing activists whose ever-louder refrain is "Cattle-Free by '93." While critics argue that cattle on public lands destroy wildlife and streamside areas, BLM official say the Bar 15 shows that cattle don't automatically spell abuse. On a recent ranch tour, BLM Rio Puerco Resource Area manager Albert Abee acknowledged the agency is trying to ten its side of the grazing story including showing off ranches like the Acomas'."This is just our effort to show we are doing a good job," Abee said. Restoring the land has been a joint effort over the last six years, since the BLM, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Soil Conservation Service and the Acomas agreed on a management plan.Under the agreement, the agencies have helped pay for materials to add water tanks and piping systems while the Acomas have contributed the labor. When the two federal agencies first surveyed the area, the number one need was water storage, said Larry Livingston, the BLM's range conservationist in charge of the allotment. "This ranch has a lot of potential because there are lots of springs that can be developed," he said. Water is the key because by having it available in more areas of the ranch, cattle can be moved often to prevent overgrazing. Also in cooperation with the BLM, Salvador has created more pastures within the ranch, restricting cattle to the areas he wants them. Since he took over the Bar 15, there are signs of improvement, said Dwain Vincent, a BLM range monitoring and watershed specialist. "A lot of new seedlings and grasses are coming in these bare spots, so that tells us we're doing something right," he said. Kimball, Rene. "Acoma Ranch a Grazing Showplace." Albuquerque Journal. 2 September 1990. F5.</text>
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<text>Kimball, Rene. "Acoma Ranch a Grazing Showplace." Albuquerque Journal. 2 September 1990. F5.</text>
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<text>A state-wide drinking water impact fee, which would shift the costs of water monitoring from water systems to water consumers, is being proposed by the New Mexico Rural Water Association. Because of new state and federal rules regulating water quality, it will be common to see $50 to $100 monthly water bills in small communities across the country by the year 2000, said Gavin Strathdee, the Rural Water Association's executive director. "The smaller the water system, the higher that cost is going to be if the cost has to be born entirely by the community or the individual system," he said. The federal government is passing more and more regulations regarding water quality, Strathdee said, but is providing little additional money for state water monitoring and compliance efforts. At the same time, New Mexico has been strapped financially by the decline in the oil and gas industry. The state no longer can pay for water sampling and testing as it did up to a few years ago. The proposed water impact fee would relieve not only small water systems, but also their customers, of much of the expense for sampling and testing by spreading the costs around. Since the problem of water contamination is a state-wide problem, Strathdee said solutions should be sought on a state-wide basis. The fairest system, he said, is for all water-system customers in the state to pay a fee based on their water usage. Everyone would pay the same amount, just as they pay the same state or federal tax on a gallon of gasoline, Strathdee said. "The idea is, the more water you take out of the ground, the more you should be paying for it." The fees would be barely noticeable if shared throughout the stateΓÇöamounting to pennies per thousand gallons, Strathdee said. The Rural Water Association will try to get legislation for a water impact fee passed by the 1991 state legislature. The impact fee being proposed would be paid into a state enterprise fund. For the first couple of years the fee is in effect, the state general fund would finance water sampling, analysis, sanitary surveys and wellhead protection throughout the state, Strathdee said. The third year, costs would be partially born by the general fund; partially by impact fees. By the sixth year, all costs would be born by the consumer-paid fees. A different proposal with the similar intent of helping small water systems with water monitoring costs, was made last year by a user-fee task force. The proposed charges ranged from a maximum of 50 cents per month per family for those supplied by small water systems, to .001 cent per family per month in Albuquerque, Strathdee said. However, because the proposal distributed costs according to the number of wells and meters in a water system, large systems complained that they would be subsidizing small water systems. Small systems complained that they were paying too much.The bill was fought by the Municipal League, Strathdee said, and was not passed by the legislature. Even if the present proposal for an impact fee is passed, Strathdee said, small systems still will have difficulty complying with the regulations if contamination is found. They either will have to find an uncontaminated water source or will have to treat the water. The technology to correct problems is very sophisticated and expensive, he said. Contamination could cause a small community water system to fold. A state revolving loan fund, established by the Rural Infrastructure Act, is a vehicle through which water systems could obtain low-interest loans for building treatment facilities. Interest is set, by law, at five percent for 20 years. However, the capacity of the loan fund depends upon the amount appropriated by the state legislature. Loan requests for the coming year total about $4 million, Strathdee said. The amount which can be loaned is whatever the legislature appropriates for the fund, plus about 600,000 that will come in from repayment of previous loans. Only $450,000 was appropriated for the fund in 1990, Strathdee said, and that money is gone. Privately-owned utilities would not have the option of applying for government funds and would have to obtain financing from banks. They might be eligible for Farmer's Home Economic Development Funds, Strathdee said, but only as a last resort. The New Mexico Rural Water Association will hold its annual conference February 28 and March 1 at the Sheraton Old Town in Albuquerque. The registration fee for association members paying before Feb. 15 is $79; the on-site fee is $91 . The charge for non-members is about $30 more.Mendel, Joyce. "Drinking Water Impact Fee." East Mountain Telegraph. Tijeras, NM. 28 December 1990.</text>
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<text>Mendel, Joyce. "Drinking Water Impact Fee." East Mountain Telegraph. Tijeras, NM. 28 December 1990.</text>
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<text>By Dean MillerSANDPOINT, IdahoΓÇöIf water quality is to the new West what water quantity was to the old West, chances are this generation of Westerners can give the region's rivers and lakes back to their kids in better shape than they got them.Settlers were drawn here and to other parts of the West by promises of cheap land, cheap water and cheap power.The latest wave of settlers is drawn here by promises of wild surroundings, clean water, and a quiet lifestyle.This is Wallace Stegner's "native home of hope," and the new West's hopes are for an amorphous, drawling good feeling, usually called "quality of life."At least that's how it looks from the shores of Idaho's Lake Pend Oreille.This monster lakeΓÇöthe 16th largest and fourth deepest in the United States, other than the Great LakesΓÇögets more than 90 percent of its annual flow from the Clark Fork, one of the most polluted rivers in the West.In recent years, Lake Pend Oreille has begun to show the effects of storing water drained from a number of sewage plants, a paper mill and the largest EPA Superfund site in the country.In the early 1980s, boat owners began to complain of scum on their hulls and lakeshore residents were dismayed by algae clinging to shoreline rocks.Fishery biologists fretted over the disappearance of Kokanee salmon from once healthy, near-shore spawning areas And the water's crystalline blue hue had gone green in some areas.Just across the border, along the Clark Fork River, Montana residents were also growing restless. Beautiful stretches of fish habitat produced too few trout, and tne increasing numbers of recreational rafters commented on theodd smell of the river and foam on its surface.In 1983, some Montanans got militant when the Champion International papermill at Frenchtown, Mont., applied for a permit that would have doubled the amount of suspended solids and oxygen-using waste pouring into the already-sick Clark Fork.Organized resistance to the papermill's plans sprung into life on both sides of the border, but especially around Lake Pend Oreille. Several busloads of people from Sandpoint trekked 200 miles to Missoula for a hearing on the permit.That was not really a surprise. In 1943, Sandpoint folks risked being labeled unpatriotic to defend their lake against a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plan.The agency wanted to drastically raise the level of the lake to store water for electrical generation in Washington, where aluminum was being smelted for war planes.That time more than 600 people turned out for a hearing on the proposal, cheering and shouting as successive speakers criticized the plan, demanding the protection of the lake's existing shoreline. The Corps backed down.Champion spawned a coalitionFifty-three years later, in 1984, opponents to Champion's dumping plans were both well organized and determined. Various groups had mobilized technical expertise, diplomatic skill and public support to negotiate an agreement that took the papermill from being the top point-source of nutrient pollution, discharging 325 pounds of phosphorous into the Clark Fork per day, to the fourth worst. Recent tests show the plant now releases 150 pounds of phosphorous per day.At the sarne time, the permit opponents organized the Clark Fork Coalition, which consisted of a board of directors, volunteer director Peter Nielsen, and about 14 members.Today, the Clark Fork Coatition has close to 1,000 individual members and100 organization and business members, ranging from the 450-member Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club of anglers to Stone Container, the current owner ofthe paper mill at Frenchtown."What's amazing to me is not that a citizens' group springs up. What's amazing to me is that it has staying power," said Phillip Wallin of River Network, in Portland.Wallin left the Trust for Public Lands after 16 years on the staff to form River Network, a three-person operation that organizes and trains citizen groups to protect their backyard rivers.Wallin contends the strength of the Clark Fork Coalition is not only that it crosses arbitrary political boundaries to deal with a three-state river basin, but that it is also a repository of knowledge on the river's ills."Peter Nielsen knows more about the scene than the people he's watching,and that makes the coalition a strong player," Wallin said.Speaking at a water quality conference during the coalition's push for a federal study of the river system, Ken Lustig, an officer with the north Idaho Panhandle Health District, put it simplest: "There is nothing that scares bureaucrats more than an informed public."People like Wallin say they are impressed by the coalition's ability to attract members and supporters from beyond the first wave of letter-writing activists."We're really the only organization that defines itself by the boundaries that exist here. Everybody else is defined by some arbitrary lines drawn on a map," Nielsen said.Of all the federal agencies with jurisdiction over the river and its banks, only the Forest Service has a headquarters office in river basin.A major three-year, three-state, federal- and state-funded study of nutrient pollution and other problems draws on the EPA's regional offices in Denver and Seattle; the environmental protection agencies of Montana, Idaho and Washington; parks departments and fish and game departments from all three states; and staff from the Helena and Boise offices of the U.S. Geologic Survey."That's why we exist, we have to bind all these agencies together," said Nielsen.An unconfirmable story is that in 1987, when the coalition was seeking money for a three-state study of the Clark Fork River, Lake Pend Oreille and Pend Oreille River basin, the EPA had to hire extra staff just to answer letters from coalition members and supporters.The EPA was not the only agency targeted by the coalition's campaigns to win money for the study."Over the last two years, we must have had about 150 letters," said David Fish, secretary for Rep. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. He said that's a remarkable number, considering that Lake Pend Oreille and the Pend Oreille River flow through just one county of Idaho: Bonner County, population 25,000."They were helpful because he took a fistful of them up to Jim Miller," the director of the Office of Management and Budget, who at one time held up the funds for the study, says Flsh.In the end, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Steve Symms, R-Idaho, sponsored an amendment to the Clean Water Act of 1987 that specifically authorized funding for a basin-wide water quality study.By 1988, all three states' governors, plus Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont.; Rep. Craig; and Sen. Brock Adams, D-Wash., won the release in May of 1988 of the initial $300,000 for the study."It became kind of a real apple pie kind of issue," Nielsen says. "When youhave a lot of people calling for the same thing, a lot of politicians will respond. We got Steve Symms and Larry Craig and Jim McClure lined up, signing letters and claiming credit for it ... it became a real safe environmental issue."But the impetus came from the citizens' coalition, said Mike Beckwith, a limnologist with the Idaho Division of Environment, who is coordinating much of the research on Lake Pend Oreille.Beckwith thinks its success can and will be emulated elsewhere."I think the Clark Fork Coalition has been a classic example. You're going to see more of that, on the Payette and in the Lower Snake River Canyons, where they're looking for minimum stream flows. I think the potential is there along any waterway."The funding of the study isn't the coalition's only success story. In 1988, the coalition convinced the city of Missoula to adopt a phosphate detergent ban.Sandpoint and the other smaller cities around Lake Pend Oreille followed suit early this year, alarming southern Idaho's phosphate mining industry.This summer, the coalition trained citizens at Paradise, Mont., to negotiate a monitoring plan for hazardous waste treatment with Burlington Northern.On the upper 120 miles of the Clark Fork River, the coalition has helped citizens make sure EPA Superfund administrators respond to community concerns. Coalition staff members are also keeping an eye on silver mining plans near the Idaho border and new gold mining in the headwaters.Boiled down, the lessons the Clark Fork Coalition has taught are: if you're going to protect the purity of rivers and lakes, you're going to have to start small, think big and win lots of friends in low places.The best low places are downstream lakeshores and riverbanks populated by retirees, anglers and tourist trappers. Nielsen has found, for instance, that more than half the coatition's members are retired and that their age and conservative approach give the coalition more credibility with industry and the federal and state bureaucracies.Having succeeded thus far, the coalition now faces its most difficult task: winning support and acceptance for environmental controls that will inevitably be proposed based on the results of the study."Some of these old-timers might not take too kindly to people coming in and telling them what to do," Nielsen says. "It's always tougher when you start to directly affect people's lifestyles or livelihoods."Miller, Dean. "Making a Difference on the Clark Fork." High Country News. 4 December 1989</text>
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<text>Miller, Dean. "Making a Difference on the Clark Fork." High Country News. 4 December 1989</text>
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<text>By Tom Milligan OF THE JOURNAL'S NORTHERN BUREAU SANTA FE—The late State Engineer Steve Reynolds once said that if he ever quit his job as water boss, he would leave the same kind of hole as if he pulled his finger from a glass of water. One of three men Gov. Garrey Carruthers will select to replace Reynolds, who died in April after 35 years on the job, may soon find out just how big an understatement that is. "The next state engineer is going to be tested almost immediately, just like a new kid on the block," said University of New Mexico law school professor and water expert Chuck DuMars. "There will be pressure from every quarter — environmentalists, traditional water users, the Legislature and individuals seeking special treatment." Carruthers is expected to select the next state engineer on Monday. Of the 14 people who applied for the position, three were selected by a task force as finalists: former Idaho water chief Kenneth Dunn, New Mexico State University professor John Hernandez and head of the state engineer's technical division Eluid Martinez. (Only Hernandez refused to be interviewed by the Albuquerque Journal for the accompanying profiles.) Carruthers' choice must be confirmed by the state Senate for a two-year term. The governor can replace the state engineer, but until the Senate confirms a replacement, the sitting state engineer stays in office. Carl Slingerland, who retired from the state Engineer's Office, holds the job now on an interim basis. The salary range is $50,000 to $70,000 a year. Carruthers met recently with gubernatorial candidates Democrat Bruce King and Republican Frank Bond, saying he wants to reach a consensus between the two men to avoid turnover in an office that has had so much stability at the top. The state engineer makes decisions on New Mexico water rights and use. His decisions are final unless appealed to a district court. To add to the responsibility, New Mexico's streams are regulated by eight interstate stream compacts in which several states have agreements concerning use of the water. They often battle for it. "Somebody always has to protect New Mexico's flank," DuMars said. "Now all the traditional water leaders are being replaced" as they retire, he said. "All the vague sections written into the compacts will end up being challenged in court." Then there's Texas. New Mexico's neighbor is still trying to pump water to El Paso from New Mexico wells, despite earlier court decisions upholding Reynolds' ruling that it couldn't have the water. It was perhaps the greatest challenge Reynolds faced during his tenure. And in another case, some southeastern New Mexico farms might be forced to rest fallow so Pecos River water can reach Texas, as agreed to in a compact. "The person who becomes state engineer could make a million bucks in a hurry if he were dishonest," said William Turney, a civil engineer from Santa Fe who worked on the design of the city's water system. "That's one thing we had in Steve Reynolds. He was a very honest state engineer." DuMars also said the new state engineer must keep partisan politics out of his decisions if he's to be even partially as successful as Reynolds was in keeping a hold on water in the state. "When you go to the state Engineer's Office, you've got to know that you can't just call somebody and get the water you want," he said. "The state engineer has to fight and maintain the image and the reality that you can't get special favors there." "The first goal is to maintain the integrity that 30 years of Steve Reynolds had in the administration of water rights," said Grove Burnett, an environmentalist lawyer and former interstate stream commissioner under Gov. Toney Anaya. "By and large, the administration of our water rights is done in an honest and straightforward manner. But the second challenge is to enlarge the visions of the state engineer to include an environmental ethic and an awareness that the creation of water management programs and projects has an enormous adverse impact (on the environment). "I've heard Reynolds say that if you converted the water rights from agricultural use to municipal and industrial uses you could put a million people between Albuquerque and Santa Fe," he said. "We would have this enormous industrialization like they have in Southern California or Phoenix. And who wants to live in those hellholes?" Besides decisions about who gets what water, the state engineer will face the problems of an expanding population and stream flows that are already overallocated—meaning there are more water rights on paper than there is water. "You just can't come to New Mexico anymore and undertake an enterprise by making a new appropriation of water," said Richard Simms, former chief attorney for the state Engineer's Office. "To have any growth that is water dependent, you're going to have to transfer a water right from agricultural uses." Milligan, Tom. "New State Engineer Faces Tough Task as Water Manager." Albuquerque Journal. 12 August 1990. A6.</text>
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<text>Milligan, Tom. "New State Engineer Faces Tough Task as Water Manager." Albuquerque Journal. 12 August 1990. A6.</text>
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<text>By Paige Morgan Karl Souder and AssociatesHouse of Cards New Mexico gave the State Engineer power over and substantial responsibility for its scarce water resources. The State Engineer is charged with making a fair allocation of streamflows and groundwater among all would-be users. At the same time, those resources must be conserved so that our grandchildren's grandchildren will still have water in their wells and acequias. The New Mexico State Engineer's office has a widespread reputation for effectively discharging its mandate. This reputation rests largely with Steve Reynolds, who held the position of State Engineer for 35 years until his death this spring. It was said of Mr. Reynolds that when Moses struck the rock and brought forth a stream, Steve was there to divvy up the water. Steve Reynolds was universally recognized as a fine statesman and a tireless defender of New Mexico's water resources against demands from Texas and Arizona. His focus was on "keeping the streams whole": that is, ensuring that streamflows are maintained in order to satisfy the terms of interstate stream compacts and to supply New Mexico's surface water users - chiefly irrigators - with the water they need. In keeping with the policy of keeping the stream whole, the State Engineer examines water rights applications to divert groundwater or surface water primarily from the standpoint of the presumed effects on the nearest stream, rather than looking at overall depletion of the hydrologic system. Regional hydrology and the rights of all water users in a hydrologic basin have been examined only when conflicts among basin rights-holders have become so prolific as to trigger the adjudication of water rights there. Even then, ground- water and surface water rights are often analyzed separately, despite frequent State Engineer Office references to their being interrelated. Outside of the few adjudicated basins in the state and those sites where administrative settlements have been used to settle protests among water users, there is no attempt to quantify basin-wide water resources or to keep a tally of water rights that have been declared and permitted. (See "Water Rights speak" for definitions of these terms.) Even in adjudicated basins, the basin hydrologic system - the relation- ships among precipitation, runoff, and sustained streamflow; how much groundwater is in storage; and how much is replenished annually - are not well understood. It is widely known by hydrologists active in the state, however, that most basins are being rapidly "mined" - that is, water is being removed much faster than it is being replenished. In short, no one really knows how much water there is in the state or how it has been parceled out. The water rights situation in New Mexico is a house of cards. The Water Budget A water budget is a simple hydrologic model comparable to accounting. Precipitation on the watersheds that deliver water within the boundaries of the state, streamflow into the state, and recharge to groundwater aquifers from those two sources are the receipts. Payments are streamflows that are mandated under interstate stream compacts for delivery out of the state, water that is evaporated directly and transpired ("exhaled", in effect by plants), and water that is consumed in various human activities. Declared, permitted and other vested water rights, plus evapotranspiration, should be approximately equal to payments. If receipts are in excess of payments, the state is able to bank some of the profit in the form of recharge to groundwater aquifers. If the opposite is true, the state will have to dig into its savings - groundwater in storage - to meet its water delivery obligations. This is exactly what is happening along the lower Pecos River. The State Engineer permitted more groundwater rights in the Roswell Artesian Basin, which feeds the lower Pecos, than can be served while still maintaining the streamflow that must be delivered to Texas under an interstate stream compact. Now farmers with water rights dating back to the 1940s are faced with being stripped of their irrigation rights in order to allow that volume of water to be returned to the river. New Mexico has been living beyond its means, and now that account has come due. Water Rights Poker The water rights policies of the State Engineer have an internal logic, but their basis in hydrology is often fairly remote. Moreover, there are several practices built into the system that can have dramatic impacts on the water which is actually consumed Three examples may be illustrative: Return Flow Credits: A water right permitted by the state may be greatly magnified by the practice of allowing a credit for water which is returned to the hydrologic system. The State Engineer allows a "return flow credit" to be given in a number of situations, both in the contexts of surface water and groundwater. As an example, septic tank leach fields are commonly allowed a fifty percent return flow credit, on the basis of meter readings showing that fifty percent of the water that enters the system is delivered to a leach field.Recently a business received State Engineer approval for a return flow credit of 90 percent: that is, given "demonstrations" (meter readings or calculations) that 90 percent of the water used by the business goes into the leach field, the State Engineer assumes that 90 percent of the diverted water returns to the hydrologic system. For instance, a water right of two acre-feet per year can thus be parlayed into a diversion right of twenty acre-feet per year: the two acre-feet is viewed as a consumptive right, amounting to 10 percent of a diversion right. The way in which a return flow plan is reviewed depends in large part on the reviewer. In general, the theory is that water discharged through a leach field will wind up replenishing a nearby stream; whether it serves to recharge the aquifer from which it was withdrawn may or may not be considered. In practice, wells are preferably sunk into a deep aquifer, specifically sealing off the shallower groundwater that is en route to a nearby stream or spring. Pumping such a well to "recharge" a stream by way of a leach field amounts to robbing Peter to pay Paul: the deeper aquifer remains depleted by the amount of water pumped, rather than by the lesser amount that is theoretically consumed. Whether or not the leach-field re- charge turns up in a stream, in the source aquifer, or in the wall of an arroyo from which it evaporates, is entirely dependent on the geohydrologic setting of a particular site. In many cases the likelihood is that effective recharge will take between tens and hundreds of years. Generally speaking, the return flow credit is often a paper accounting procedure which allows a permittee to acquire the use of a great deal of water without having to acquire formal rights to that amount. Magnifying Water Rights in the Move from Ditch to Well Water rights can be severed from one location and moved to another. Such a transfer can take place between surface water and groundwater. When a surface water right is discontinued as such, it generally means that the amount of land irrigated from a surface water source will be withdrawn from irrigation; the rights that had been used to irrigate that land may be transferred to a well. As noted earlier, such a transfer is examined only from the standpoint of its effects on the adjacent streams. It is assumed that when an acre of land is retired from irrigation, the roughly three acre-feet of water per year that would have been used to irrigate that land will be available as streamflow. If the well into which those rights are transferred taps an aquifer that is a tributary to the stream, it is assumed that pumping that well will eventually result in reduced streamflow.The owner of the well in our example now has a right to reduce streamflow by three acre-feet per year. Using a series of calculations that are replete with assumptions, the well user can estimate the length of time that it will take for his pumping to affect the stream. In the interim, before the full three-acre feet are estimated to be removed from the stream, the well user can be granted temporary rights to substantially more than the right that was retired from the stream: a multiplier of twenty is common. Then when pumping such a volume is estimated to remove more than three acre-feet from the stream, the well user can either purchase and retire more surface rights from the stream system or cut back on his pumping rate. The Wild Card of Domestic Water Rights Under the applicable law, domestic well rights are viewed as outside the purview of the State Engineer and they are not considered in evaluating impacts from a new or transferred water right. Yet Santa Fe County has been estimated to have over 10,000 domestic wells. If each of these wells diverted its allowed three acre-feet per year (equivalent to one million gallons), groundwater storage in the Santa Fe Basin would be quickly depleted. The statutory language under which domestic well rights are permitted created this special category of water rights to guarantee that every household would be granted rights to water sufficient for its own, non-commercial uses. Gradually the interpretation of "domestic" has been broadened to apply to sanitary uses at commercial establishments - another means of allowing water use without acquiring formal permitted rights.THE STATE ENGINEER AND THE ENVIRONMENTUse It Or Lose It A water right is vested by applying it to "beneficial use" - interpreted as almost anything except maintaining instream flow. If a portion of a water right goes unused, it is subject to forfeiture. Obviously, this removes much of the incentive for water conservation, despite the State Engineer's mandate to conserve the water resources of the state and to consider the public interest in approving or denying an application for rights resources.Tame Those Rivers New Mexico is the only western state without any legal recognition of instream flow - despite the "conservation and public interest" language cited above. The State Engineer does not recognize maintenance of instream flow as a beneficial use - not for protection of commercially viable fish species, not for recreational use on wild and scenic rivers, not for maintenance of riparian zones. There is no value perceived to protecting natural streamflow for the sake of the biological systems and recreational opportunities supported by the stream. Even so, the policy of "keeping the streams whole" would appear to support instream flow as a side effect. Yet the intent of the whole-stream policy is to guarantee flows that must be delivered to various rights-holders.Cultural Implications of State Engineer Policies:Traditional Communities or Condos? The high value of surface water rights (due to the multiplier effects described above) and their relative scarcity has led to rights-holders on centuries-old acequias selling their rights to developers for much-needed cash. These economic pressures have been the final nail in the coffin of a number of traditional communities in northern New Mexico, where the acequia not only watered the fields but often pulled the community together to maintain the ditch and its agricultural way of life. The conventional wisdom is that there is no role for small-scale agriculture in northern New Mexico at the dawn of the 21st century. As with much conventional wisdom, this view can be challenged. In the first place, dwindling fuel resources are bound to produce a rise in transportation costs for nationally distributed produce which will drive up the cost of Washington apples and California peaches and make locally produced fruits and vegetables more competitive. In addition, there are a number of socio-cultural arguments for maintaining viable rural communities, rather than forcing people with an agricultural heritage to choose between a job in the city and unemployment in the village. New Mexico needs to set government policies to achieve ends that are desirable from the standpoint of human as well as natural resources. The State Engineer's Office in the Post-Reynolds Era Steve Reynolds died with his boots on several months before a gubernatorial election. The next governor has an unparalleled opportunity to outfit the State Engineer's Office with a creative environmental and socioeconomic agenda, bringing it closer to meeting its mandate as a technically- based, conservation-oriented agency. To achieve environmental goals, the State Engineer would place the Hydrology and Hydrographic Survey Sections of the agency on the cutting edge of hydrography, charging them with collecting existing climatological and hydrologic information on the state, filling in gaps with data collection where necessary, and preparing models of all of New Mexico's hydrologic basins as a starting point for developing an annual water budget for the state. The Water Rights Section would be called on to prepare basin summaries of all water rights declared and permitted there; all approved changes in a water right would be entered immediately in the summary. The listing would be annotated to indicate which rights have been adjudicated, which have undergone administrative settlements, which have been field-checked by the State Engineer's Office - in short, just how solid a given right is. With these two tools - basin models and basin water rights summaries - there would be a basis to determine roughly how much water remains to be appropriated in the state, or indeed how over-appropriated the resource already may be. Where over-appropriation threatens the rights of water users, the State Engineer should collaborate with other state agencies to implement conservation programs that would reduce the pressures on water resources. These might include agricultural extension work to promote high-value, water- conserving crops. It might also involve engineering assistance to businesses to develop specific techniques for reducing water consumption in their activities. In those areas of the state where groundwater tends to be highly mineralized, the state might provide seed money for desalinization plants which would offer business and employment opportunities as well as potable water. Economic opportunities using mineralized water could be explored and promoted; rather than permitting the pumping of relatively high-quality Ogalalla water to make brine for use In drilling oil wells in the Permian Basin, this type of operation should be permitted to use wells tapping naturally briny water. Saline springs that turn the Pecos salty not far above the Texas border might be utilized for pen-rearing shrimp. Current practice at the State Engineer office amounts to writing water rights "checks" without balancing the checkbook. New Mexico deserves better. Pressures are mounting to divert water from agriculture into municipal uses and leisure time activities. Is that where we want it to go? Can our water- sheds and aquifers support the demands made on them? How do we incorporate environmental protection into our water rights laws and regulations? These are some of the questions facing the next State Engineer. The possibilities for improving the management of New Mexico's precious water resources are limited only by political will. Morgan, Paige. "Water Rights in New Mexico: A Primer." The Green Fire Report, a publication of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center. Santa Fe, NM. November/December 1990.</text>
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<text>Morgan, Paige. "Water Rights in New Mexico: A Primer." The Green Fire Report, a publication of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center. Santa Fe, NM. November/December 1990.</text>
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<text>Sherman will never know how big his trout was. Or even if it was a trout. Though he thought it was. Sherman, who was born with Down's syndrome, was fishing with his dad at Lake Del Valle, just south of Livermore. His father had walked to the car to get their lunch when Sherman called out. "Dad! Come back Dad!" His father dropped the peanut butter sandwiches and ran to the shore. Sherman, holding his small, arcing fishing rod high above his head, was wallowing waist deep in the lake's azure water. "It's a monster!" he cried. As suddenly as it had begun, the line went limp. The fish was gone. All the way home to Berkeley, Sherman recounted his tale. First it was a big catfish, then a bass, then a trout, then a "monster" trout. He had lost his catch, but he isn't likely to lose the memories. As Izaak Walton in his 1653 classic The Compleat Angler pointed out, fishing is more than casting out and reeling in a catch. The act of sitting on a bank with his line in the water, wrote Walton, "lifted me above the earth and let me possess joys not promised in my birth." Sherman and his dad enjoy fishing at Lake Del Valle, a State Water Project reservoir. They didn't land the big one that day, but they'll be back. Like millions of Northern Californians, they're only about an hour from Lake Del Valle and just a few hours from other recreation areas made possible by the water projects. As urban areas grow so does the search for open spaces where one can get back in touch with nature. Perhaps one of the reservoirs' most valuable services is to those who need a temporary escape from the rigors of the day."There's something about being near a large body of water that makes life peaceful," says Chuck Von Berg, who works for the Department of Water Resources at Lake Oroville. "We get a lot of people from the cities who want to retire here." "We take kids on walks through the lake area," says park ranger Kim Matthews at the Lake Oroville Visitors Center. "I'm amazed by their awareness, by their wonder at the outdoors," Matthews walks them around the lake so they can see firsthand some of the plant and animal life they may only have known from textbooks. "It's a different world out here, and to some of these kids, it's a first experience with it." The State Water Project outdrew both the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's in 1987. More than 3 million people visited one of the reservoirs or the aqueduct that year, the last for which the Department of Water Resources has complete figures. Jeff Clair of San Jose is a software programmer most of the time, but he spends a few days a month wheeling down the bikeway that follows the California Aqueduct. It isn't for everyone, he says. "There aren't a lot of mountains and trees along the way so you don't ride it for sight-seeing. It's just you, your bike and your thoughts." About 2,000 cyclers used the roadway in 1987. Clair sees bike clubs from the San Francisco Bay Area or Sacramento taking off down the pavement, and he waves at the fishermen who cast their lines into the longest fishing hole in the world.One of the folks who may wave back is Harriet Tate, who lives near Tracy. Tate is one of the 50,000 people who fish the aqueduct each year. Equipped with her tackle box, two poles and her lucky jacketΓÇöa pale blue windbreakerΓÇöTate arrives early in the morning at one of the fishing access sites. "It's the best catfishing I've seen, and I've been fishing for 30 years," she reports. A retired clerical worker, Tate gets out to the aqueduct about three times a week, which usually rewards her with a string of fishΓÇö enough to feed her and her husband and sometimes more. Along with advice on bait, she sometimes even dispenses fish. "You see kids out there sometimes, maybe it's their first time fishing, and they haven't caught anything. Young kids usually don't have the patience. I'll give them a few of mine. I've caught enough to last a lifetime." "Some of these people have been coming here since the aqueduct opened," says Dave Kennard, an associate engineer with DWR who's watched the numbers of people, and fish, grow. "You'll see people walking away from the aqueduct with stringers of maybe 20 two-pound catfish. They mainly catch catfish, although sometimes someone gets lucky with a bass." The fishing is also good at the other, more conventional sites like Antelope Lake, which along with Lake Davis and Frenchman's Lake, were specifically designed with fishing in mind. Antelope Dam, some 43 miles from Quincy, provides a year-round flow of water into Indian Creek, increasing the numbers of fish, and fishermen. "It's a real boon," says Cory Taylor, a sometime bait wholesaler who lives near the area. "In summer the stream bed used to get awfully low, but now there's always enough water for trout. And year-round trout means year-round fishermen." While Antelope Lake gets its share of visitorsΓÇöabout 2 50,000 per year ΓÇöit can't match the 5 million who visit nearby Lake Shasta. The centerpiece of the federally funded Central Valley Project, Shasta makes water available for irrigation in the Sacramento and the San Joaquin valleys. But before the water begins its journey south, it provides a lot of opportunities to commune with the flora and fauna, along with livelihoods for thousands. Businesses around the lake reported a combined income of $22 million last year for restaurants, lodges, houseboat rentals, guides and other enterprises. Roger Lefebvre manages Lake Shasta Caverns, an attraction that lures some 70,000 visitors per year who want to poke around stalactites and stalagmites. "If the lake weren't here, this would be a different place," says Lefebvre, who is also president of the Lake Shasta Resort Owners Association. Built in the waning years of the Depression, the dam and its resulting lake were intended to control mountain runoff and make water available to farmers. Recreation was an afterthought. Not so today. "This is the houseboat capital of the state," says Lefebvre. "There are some 500 available for rental in the summer. Fortunately, the lake's big enough to handle them all." When the last camper or houseboater has packed his car and started driving south after Labor Day, the salmon begin their autumn and winter runs. Guides can be seen trudging upstream on the Sacramento or its tributaries, ahead of some businessmen attending an outdoorsy corporate conference. The water projects also give a nudge to San Francisco tourism. "It's supposed to be business, but we're going fishing," says a children's clothing executive who declined to reveal his name lest his boss exclude him from future salmon-fishing trips. "We may not talk strategies or sales, but there's something primally satisfying about being in the woods and fighting a fish on the end of your line. We go back to the office ready to take on the world." Besides rousing the economy, Shasta Dam could be said to have improved local residents' sleep so they could concentrate on renting houseboats and selling bait to the city folks on weekends. People here can still remember life before the darn, and many of their memories aren't fond ones. People lived in fear of the Sacramento River. When the rain pounded for days at a time, the river would rise high, then higher still. People who lived downstream slept lightly. A call to evacuate could come at any moment. Today the only bad thing about the rain around the upper Sacramento is that it gets you wet. During a horrific series of storms in 1955, some 200,000 cubic feet of water per second rushed into the lake. The dam restricted downstream flow on the Sacramento to a far more manageable 16,000 cubic feet per second. The residents, their farms and businesses weren't washed away. That same year, a flood decimated Yuba City, on the banks of the Feather River, putting it under water 45 minutes after a levee broke; 74 people were killed. "Oroville Dam was still on the drawing boards," says DWR's von Berg. The facilities that supply water also provide such tangible assets as recreation, flood control and tourism, and intangible benefits like quality of life, and fish stories for special children like Sherman.Morrell, John. "Give and Take." Aqueduct. Published by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. V57. N2. 1990. Pp 15-18.</text>
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<text>Morrell, John. "Give and Take." Aqueduct. Published by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. V57. N2. 1990. Pp 15-18.</text>
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<text>In late June, State Engineer Eluid Martinez reorganized the Pecos River project team and added new members to the group. The team now includes part-time assignments for over 25 members of the technical and legal staff of the State Engineer Office, as well as seven contractors. Their task is to evaluate the various water management options available and recommend those best suited to solving the complex problems of the stream system.This intense effort was made necessary by a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decree ordering New Mexico to make up future Pecos River delivery shortfalls to Texas. Under the decree, deliveries are based on a complicated set of calculations used to compute requirements figured on a three-year moving average.The state underdelivered by 14,100 acre-feet in 1990, but because of overdeliveries in prior years, New Mexico now has a residual credit of 27,600 acre-feet. The State Engineer Office estimates that this credit may be erased after the 1991 irrigation season, because of the large deficits incurred in 1989 and 1990. At the end of 1991, these shortages will be included in the computation of the three-year moving average used to set the delivery requirements for this year.The project team is examining ways to increase stateline flows without having to discontinue irrigation by a large number of farmers in the Pecos River basin, a situation which would cause great economic disruption to the area. The team's strategy is to take a comprehensive approach to the problem by setting reasonable water conservation goals and using a combination of water management options to achieve the goals.One of the options being seriously pursued is the purchase or lease of water rights in both the Roswell and Carlsbad areas. The 1991 Legislature approved the use of $3.8 million in severance tax monies for this purpose during the fiscal year which began in July. The Legislature gave the state engineer the authority to approve conservation programs under which water rights could be assigned to the state and not be subject to forfeiture while being held in the program.The State Engineer Office also expects that a curtailment of junior water right holders on the Pecos will be necessary, beginning with either the 1992 or 1993 irrigation season. When curtailment would occur depends partly upon the amount of water purchased or leased through conservation programs in 1991. Any curtailment is expected to be implemented in phases, based on criteria being considered by the Pecos project team. It should be expected that such a water curtailment would be consistently applied to both agricultural and non-agricultural users.Other water management options being considered by the state engineer include expanded metering and monitoring of irrigation wells, reducing evapotranspiration losses from Brantley Reservoir, and additional water conservation measures such as canal seepage control. The project team has presented its initial recommendations to the state engineer, and a flexible management plan has been put into effect.New Mexico State Engineer's Office. "SEO Studies Pecos Management Options." Water Line. 1:1 Summer 1991.</text>
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<text><span class="style2">ew Mexico State Engineer's Office. "SEO Studies Pecos Management Options." Water Line. 1:1 Summer 1991.</span></text>
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<text>Nydes, Burt. "Climates for Change: Legacy of Drought." "American City and County."</text>
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<text> The article considers how we should educate people (farmers) about droughts and how to conserve during them. Also discussed if what droughts can do to the environment and what we can do to battle them.</text>
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<text>By Bert RobinsonKNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERSWASHINGTONΓÇöBill Eoff knew he had trouble when the wooden flume that diverted Mill Creek into his irrigation ditches rotted out, flooding two acres of pasture on his land in Northern California. He did not learn how much trouble until a federal inspector gazed at this damp field and deemed it "wetland."Today, seven months after the inspection, the flume continues to decay, and Eoff's land is turning to muck. But the retired businessman's repair plans remain blocked by laws intended to preserve America's marshes and bogs."I got a letter telling me that if I destroyed this wetland I could be fined $50,000 a day" Eoff said, his voice trembling in anger. "I'm trying to improve my land, and the government makes it sound like I killed someone."Depending on whom you believe, there are dozens or hundreds or thousands of cases like Bill Eoff's across the country -- cases that sound like government control run amok. Consider the retirees in Wyoming who can't sell the property in which they invested their life savings, the mining firm in Idaho that isn't allowed to explore its claim, or the businessman in Louisiana forbidden to build a crawfish farm in a soggy garbage dump.Now a powerful coalition of farming, real estate, and business interests is marshaling these tales in an effort to change the way government decides which lands are wetlands.Already, the group's efforts have transformed an arcane dispute over water tables, soil types, and plant characteristics into what may be the environmental melee of the year. It scored its most impressive success to date last month as three federal agencies proposed a new definition of wetlands that environmentalists say could strip federal protection from 10 million acres across the country."You get the impression that (wetlands law) is keeping anything from happening in this nation," said Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., during a congressional hearing on federal wetlands law, which is part of the Clean Water Act and up for reauthorization this year. "Farmers can't farm. Developers can't develop. People who own real estate can't enjoy the benefits of it."Chafee may be overstating the case, but the stakes are staggering.At least 95 million acres in the lower 48 states are federally protected wetlands. Many of those acres are virtually indispensable parts of America's natural environment; they represent habitat, food, or breeding ground to 96 percent of the nation's commercially important fish and 50 percent of its migratory birds. Wetlands also act to cleanse streams and rivers, scientists say, and provide a natural form of flood protection.But as much as three-quarters o. these wetlands are privately owned ΓÇöand to their owners they represent opportunity, dreams, and more than a little money. Once the federal government declares a piece of property wetlands it becomes nearly impossible to develop and virtually worthless. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, an acre of prime land sells for $100,000 to $200,000. If designated wetlands, its price drops to $6,000."What we're talking about here," said Sen. Steve Symms, R-Idaho, "isa basic denial of private property rights.The indication that the Bush administration is siding with aggrieved property owners carries with it a touch of irony. During a 1988 appearance on the shores of Lake Erie, George Bush declared a policy of "no net loss" of wetlands, perhaps the strongest environmental pledge he made during his presidential campaign.Bush was reacting to dramatic reports that catalogued the disappearance of America's wetlands. Federal agencies say that more than half of the wetlands outside of Alaska have been destroyedΓÇöincluding 90 percent in California acreage, 50 percent in Michigan, and 46 percent in Florida, a state that was once more wetland than dry land. Most of the losses came as marshes and bogs were drained and filled for the country's farmers, a conversion process encouraged by the federal government.More recently, with tougher preservation laws on the books, environmentalists have blamed the continuing destruction of wetlands acreage on the timidity of federal regulators. In the wake of Bush's "no net loss" promise, the regulators set about to rectify this impression. But some critics say their newfound aggressiveness went much too far.Soon, land owners found the feared wetlands designation stamped on low spots in hay fields and soggy-soiled trash dumpsΓÇö areas that may indeed offer sustenance to wildlife and birds, as environmentalists claim, but that are far more difficult to defend."I mean, we're not talking about the marshes with herons stalking through them and ducks paddling in puddles," said Dave Ivester, an attorney who specializes in wetlands disputes in the West. "We're talking about areas that no self-respecting duck would ever be interested in. I've got clients with wetlands problems in Nevada."Longtime toes of wetlands lawΓÇö including oil companies, developers, and mining firmsΓÇösaw their opening. They founded a group called the National Wetlands Coalition, collected horror stories that depict Mr. and Mrs. Middle America caught in a thicket of regulation, and mounted a ferocious lobbying attack on Congress and the White House.In the face of the onslaught, some environmentalists retreated. EPA Administrator William Reilly, widely considered the most environmentally minded top official in the Bush administration, proclaimed himself "embarrassed" by some of the wetlands designations.Other environmentalists have criticized Reilly' s conciliatory approach, preferring to confront the National Wetlands Coalition head on. In a recent Senate hearing, an influential group of politiciansΓÇöincluding majority leader George MitchellΓÇöoffered the most spirited defense of wetlands preservation heard in Congress this year. They suggested that many of the horror stories that have cowed their colleagues are rank hyperbole.In Northern California, federal wetlands inspector Barbara Benge charges Bill Eoff with the sin of exaggeration about his damp pasture. "It is a natural wetland," said Benge, an official with the Sacramento office of the Army Corps of Engineers.But Eoff says, "If I hadn't bought this land it'd be a golf course by now."They're telling me I can't even manage my own land. I tell you, it's like we don't have any rights left."Robinson, Bert. "New Coalition Fights to Ease Wetlands Rules." Knight-Ridder News Service story in Albuquerque Journal. 4 August 1991. G7.</text>
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<text>Robinson, Bert. "New Coalition Fights to Ease Wetlands Rules." Knight- Ridder News Service story in Albuquerque Journal. 4 August 1991. G7.</text>
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<text> By Robert Rodriguez JOURNAL STAFF WRITERThe Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District has approved a bare bones 1990-91 budget that cuts overall spending and avoids tax increases.Unlike last year when approval of the budget was stalled by a controversial rate increase, this year's budget was adopted with little fanfare.District officials credit a new budget process and the driving need to reduce spending as major reasons for the quick approval.Included in the no-frills $7.4 million budget is a 4.5-percent cost-of-living increase for the district's 170 full-time employees. There are no plans for major equipment purchases.The district provides irrigation drainage and flood control along the Rio Grande flood plain from Cochiti to the headwaters of Elephant Butte Lake. Generally, anyone who owns property in the flood plain must pay conservancy taxes.Peggy McCarthy, district administrative officer, said although the budget was about $72,000 less than last year's budget, it did not mean the conservancy has solved its financial woes."We are not in any worse financial condition," McCarthy said. "And things are definitely tighter in terms of cash reserves."She said the district had been dipping into cash reserves over a six-year period to meet operating expenses. That is no longer happening.Last year, board members approved a hefty rate increase, 26 percent for urban ratepayers and 37 percent for rural ratepayers, in order to boost its revenues.Class A taxpayersΓÇöthose with more than five acres of irrigable landΓÇöwill pay $28.52 an acre. Class B taxpayersΓÇöthose with fewer than five acresΓÇöwill pay 4.70 per $1,000 of assessed value.Several steps were taken to cut spending, including an indefinite moratorium on hiring, continued leasing of heavy equipment and purchase of six used light-duty trucks instead of new ones."The focus was not on rates but on our expenditures," McCarthy said.Board member Gordon "Corky" Herkenhoff, who serves on the budget committee, said the panel helped reduce the budget by being "very careful about earmarking funds this time.""I think the staff had used the board in the past to just fill their pots with money," he said.Rodriguez, Robert. "Irrigation District OKs No-Frills 1991 Budget." Albuquerque Journal. 5 June 1990. E1. </text>
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<text>Rodriguez, Robert. "Irrigation District OKs No-Frills 1991 Budget." Albuquerque Journal. 5 June 1990. E1. </text>
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<text>By Michael RossLos Angeles TimesWASHINGTONΓÇöIf Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., gets his way this year, the tap will be turned off to federal water subsidies to large farms in several Western states. Miller's efforts to limit the flow were thwarted in the final hours of the 101st Congress, but the battle this year is more likley to go his way, Miller says, in part because one of his main opponentsΓÇöSen Pete Wilson, R-Calif.ΓÇöwill be out of the fray. At issue is a loophole in the 1982 Reclamation Reform Act through which large farms have been able to receive federal water subsidies meant only for small farms. Written with the intention of encouraging family farming in the water-scarce West, the act permitted farms of less than 960 acres to receive irrigation water pumped through federal canals at low, subsidized rates. However, large farms and agribusinesses have been able to receive the subsidies by dividing their holdings into trusts and partnerships composed of multiple 960-acre units. Branding that a "rip-off of millions and millions of taxpayer dollars," Miller sponsored legislation that would have dissolved such trusts. Attached to a $1.5 billion water projects bill, it was overwhelmingly passed by the House 316-97 last June and seemed headed for certain passage in the Senate. But opponents, who argued that the wording of Miller's legislation would also hurt many small farmers, killed the measure just before adjournment with the help of Wilson. Stalled by the standoff between Wilson, who refused to let the bill go through with the offending amendment, and Miller, who refused to let it go without it, the bill, including a grab bag of pet water projects, went down the congressional drain when lawmakers adjourned in October. Miller, chairman of the House Interior Committee's water and power subcommittee, now says that he plans to refloat the water reform amendment early this year. Opponents of Miller's reforms are also gearing up for the fight, but they will have to wage it without two key alliesΓÇöWilson, who is moving on to the governor's mansion in Sacramento, Calif., and Rep Charles Pashayan Jr., R-Calif., who was defeated in his bid for reelection. "I expect much less opposition because the Senate now understands just how serious the House is about this," Miner said. Ross, Michael. "California Lawmaker to Refloat Water Bill." Los Angeles Times News Service in Albuquerque Journal. 6 January 1991. G5.</text>
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<text>Ross, Michael. "California Lawmaker to Refloat Water Bill." Los Angeles Times News Service in Albuquerque Journal. 6 January 1991. G5.</text>
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<text>ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL May 17, 1990"Letters to the Journal"START MANAGING STATE'S WATERWith the passing of Steve Reynolds the accolades to his 35 year career as state engineer have come in, and rightly so.Having served for a time with Reynolds on the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (19851987) I would like to join in tribute to the man as well as the engineer. At the same time, I would suggest that his career cannot be seen in perspective without a disclaimer or two.. . . Reynolds' water policy agenda can be summed up in a sentence: To retain as much water as possible inside the state line, divert it and put it to consumptive use.This water policy serves well to capture and divert water in support of agriculture, and municipal and industrial use. At the same time it minimizes the so-called instream uses of surface flows for fish, wildlife and recreation values.The fact is that New Mexico water law, in denying recognition of instream flows as a beneficial use, has effectively disenfranchised a large number of citizens (call us the conservation community) from participating in state water policy because our preferred use of water is against the law.Reynolds didn't pass the water laws that negate instream flows as a beneficial use, but it must be said that over a period of 35 years he consistently and effectively opposed any change in this unfair system, right up through the recent legislative session.With the exception of the still free-flowing Gila River, Reynolds lived to see every major New Mexico dam and water project come to pass.Certainly no one person could have gathered as much water for the state. Now, with the dams built and the water captured, it is time to turn from water development to water management, and a legal recognition that our state benefits when water promotes catfish, ducks and sycamore trees, as well as chile fields and urban growth.M.H. SALMONSilver City</text>
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<text>Salmon, M.H. "Start Managing State's Water." Albuquerque Journal. Op- Ed Page. 17 May 1990.</text>
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<text>NOTES Policy research project report / Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs ; no. 57. Project director: David J. Eaton. Includes index. SUBJECTS 1. Water quality management--Texas--Bibliography. 2. Water quality management--Mexico--Bibliography. LOCATION Law Library Lower Floor CALL NUMBER TD365.S687 1983 </text>
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<text>Sourcebook for Rio Grande/Rio Bravo water management : a report / by the Texas/Mexico Border Water Policy Research Project, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin. Austin, Tex. : The School, 1983. </text>
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<text>HIGH COUNTRY NEWS December 4, 1989BRINGING BACK THE RANGE: IN OREGON, RANCHERS, ACADEMICS AND ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE MANAGING WATERSHEDS OF SMALL CREEKS WITH CHAINSAWS, FIRE AND CATTLE TO BRING THOSE CREEKS BACK TO LIFE AND SAVE AN ENDANGERED TROUT.by Jim StiakIt is late August in central Oregon. A sparkling brook runs along the bottom of a canyon in the dry, juniper-dotted hills. Tiny rainbow trout swim in the clear water. Sedges, grasses and young willows hug the stream banks, their bright green contrasting sharply with the brown slopes rising above.In a Bureau of Land Management cap, sunglasses and an aw-shucks grin, Earl McKinney is standing alongside Bear Creek explaining what sounds like a a minor miracle. With chainsaws, torches and cattle, he's saying, this stream has been transformed from one that used to trickle dry every surnmer. Now it flows year-round."The BLM watershed program," says McKinney, "is to cut junipers, wait three years and burn, (then) have a good cattle grazing program lined up."McKinney is a range conservationist with the BLM in Prineville, Ore. In the early 1970s, his district began cutting trees, burning fields and allowing selective grazing to rehabilite watersheds long overgrazed.Thinning the junipers, McKinney explains, lets the grass trap more of the meager water that falls in this country. Fires keep junipers from resprouting and stimulate grass to grow, and the cattle, if grazed at the right time of year, also help the grass along.McKinney and a medley of people roam along the stream, poking in the soil, snapping pictures, swapping stories. It's the quarterly get-together and tour of the Oregon Watershed ImprovementCoalition, an ad hoc group of 17 people from academia, the cattle and timber industries, federal and state agencies, and wildlife and environmental groups. The coalition was formed in early 1986 to improve not only damaged lands, but also relations."The environmentalists said grazing on public lands should be eliminated," recalls one member, but "the ranchers said the environmental community should be eliminated."Bill Kreuger, a professor of rangeland resources at Oregon State University is coalition chairman. He arranged the first meeting, seeing it as a test of whether quarreling factions could stay in the same room for a couple hours. They did, and the group has been meeting ever since.Friction over a fishPart of the friction among the different parties centered around an obscure fish, the Lahontan cutthroat trout, that was rare and getting rarer. The Lahontan, also known as the black spotted trout, dates back to the day when the Great Basin was one big lake and the fish was the largest trout in North American waters. In the 1930s, for example, a 41pounder was caught in Pyramid Lake, Nev.But with commercial overharvesting, irrigation dams and interbreeding with introduced species, the pure strain was decimated until it survived in just a few small streams. Then came years of drought, and on three streams in central Oregon, the Lahontan population plunged. On Big White Horse Creek, its population dropped 87 percent in four years.Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently considers it only a "sensitive" species, pressure could mount to list the trout as endangered. Like the spotted owl, the spotted trout could be the center of a political mess.The coalition hopes to avoid that by repairing both trout habitat and community relations. In an effort to save the Lahontan, cattle have been fenced out of Big White Horse Creek for the first time ever."Once the riparian habitat gets back in shape, we expect the stream will deepen and the fish population increase," explains coalition member Cal Cole. He is the executive director of Oregon Trout, a group that he calls a voice for the fish rather than the fishermen.But preventing grazing on public lands is not the answer, Cole adds. That will just put pressure on private lands, and much of the best landΓÇöthe bottom, riparian lands ΓÇö are private. The answer, Cole and other coalition members hope, is education about enlightened ranching practices.The coalition has only one on-the-ground project of its own, at Bridge Creek, but members respond to calls for help or advice from all around Oregon's rangelands. Every few months, the group takes a tour to see the work being done, not only streamside, but also high above in the upper watersheds.On-the-ground realityToday, the tour is on Doc and Connie Hatfield's "High Desert Ranch" outside Brothers, Ore. Doc Hatfield leads the group through a series of windswept fields, and at the first stop, he tosses his grey Stetson onto a patch of earth surrounded by scattered tufts of Idaho fescue."Notice how much bare ground there is here," he says. "This field hasn't been grazed for 25 years." He reaches down and tugs on one of the clumps, which comes out easily. "Not much root vigor," he saysHe comes to a fence. On the left, where bushy grasses reach high, there's heavy animal use, he says. On the right, with few grasses, there's no animal use. He says grazing helps vegetation by recycling nutrientsΓÇöheld in the cowpiesΓÇöand by stomping down dead vegetation and pushing seeds into the soil"The big animal influence," adds McKinney, "is the critical driving force in the grassland ecosystem."Doc Hatfield leads the group to a field where the juniper trees were bumed off several years ago. When a storm came, he says, the water ran off quickly, but clean. The sediment was trapped by thick grasses that grew in place of the junipers.Bill Kreuger holds a quick class in erosion. He says there was a study that compared rates of erosion under different vegetation covers. The most erosion was under big juniper. Less occurred under sagebrush but the leastΓÇösomething like 100 times less than under juniperΓÇöwas under grassJunipers also steal water. When the trees are cut in the hills the water table rises in the lower lands. Willow and Bear creeks, which used to be intermittent, are now year-round, Kreuger reports.Kreuger points to a 20-foot high juniper. "According to data," he says, "on a warm, saturated spring day, that tree'll pump up about 50 gallons of water a day.""Like any evergreen," adds McKinney, "juniper transpires all year. So in the spring, the grass is already wilted from lack of water."The tour heads up a pair of dirt tracks, past a hand-painted sign reading "Connie's Point" to a rocky knoll with a stand of twisted junipers and a 360 degree view. The country is gorgeous, the air scented with sage. This, says Doc, is the upper watershed of Camp Creek.He points to a nearby slope with fewer junipers than the other hills. We've cut the trees, Doc says, leaving enough shade for cows and cover for deer, but mostly grasses for our watershed. He turns to Dave Lumens of the Izaak Walton League for approval. Lumens slowly looks around and nods. "This looks good," he says. "Wildlife needs diversity, which this has."Doc heads down the hill, pointing out the fluffy tufts of grass. The slope is grazed twice a year, but only for a short time, which Doc Hatfield says is timed to encourage its growth. "You can imagine water rolling off this when it's frozen ground," he says, "It'd have a heck of a time building up any speed with all these cracks and crevices and clumps.""Now you gotta hurry up," he says, playing tour guide. "This is real exciting." He stops at a gully with a trickle of a creek and a large willow. "This willow is 50 years old," he says, "but this flow wasn't here except for a couple months in the spring ΓÇö until we cut the junipers.""We've come a long way in three years, after 120 years of misuse," someone comments.Maybe the Oregon Watershed Improvement Coalition can change the world, says Doc Hatfield. "Like this, where ranchers and environmentalists are talking together, realizing there is common ground."There's work being done all over the state, says another coalition member. A rancher in southeast Oregon is working on improving 35 to 40 miles of Trout Creek. He wants to meet with people to talk about it, but not with environmentalists, another member points out."It takes time," says Doc, "for these things to happen."The tour winds back down the road toward Bear Creek. Earl McKinney takes over, and points to downed junipers Iying along the stream banks. The BLM started cutting junipers in the early 1970s, he says. The trees dangle in the water, but not so thick that they block the sun from the riparian vegetation. The tree is pointed so the butt sits on the ground and doesn't easily shift in floods. Back eddies form behind the junipers, depositing silt."The junipers are the symptoms of 125 years of man and his livestock," says McKinney. "The real damage to some of these creeks was in the first 20 years cattle and sheep grazed on them. They've never had a chance to recover."Besides cutting junipers, the coalition has also protected riparian vegetation. "Any vegetation along the creekbank slows water," says McKinney. "Grass is great, willow is wonderful. Willow slows more water, makes for less erosion and more bank building. Beavers keep them thinnedΓÇömany small trees are better at slowing water than a few big ones. This is just my viewpoint, that the beavers' function is to keep trees young. But they've been trapped out."He stops at a wide, flat area where tall bunch grasses sway in the breeze. It is the floodplain of Bear Creek."This area was grazed in the spring for a month," McKinney says. "It gets some heavy stomping. Where grazing is allowed, perennial grasses are establishing. Where grazing isn't allowed, it's annuals, and they were washed away by last year's flood.""The water table is rising," he continues, gesturing over the field of grass. "Eventually this should be meadow. And the floods aren't as big as they used to be. That's the payoff for the upper watershed work."He moves along the creek, to a spot where the floodplain narrows, and holds up a faded photo from 1976. The area in the photo is bare and rocky. He points over his shoulder to the same area now, lush with young willow. Tiny rainbow trout fry gather in the shade of the overhanging banks. Two coalition members swap fish stories about the 14-inch rainbow caught last year.Grazing at the right timeThis time of year is when we kill our creeks around here, says McKinney. "The cattle graze the riparian zone, which is green and altractive, but not rich enough to put any weight on them. The creeks get ruined and the cattle don't thrive. Nobody wins.""Down in the riparian zone," he continues, "the idea is to graze after the runoff, after the vegetation has grabbed the mud flowing down the creek. This area was grazed three times heavier than before, but is in much better condition. It's all a matter of timing.""There aren't any two systems where you can use the same prescription," adds Oregon Trout's Cal Cole. "Some systems, such as narrow canyons, just can't be grazed."There are places where keeping the cattle off entirely works. On Willow Creek, one of the many Willow Creeks here, rainbow trout have returned to healthy levels. The fate of the Lahontan cutthroat trout is still in doubt, but, Cole insists, the coalition's work will make a difference."Fish are at the end of the line," he says. "First you've got to have good water quality, which is a product of good land management. You've got to get the management together first." That management, says McKinney, is coming around. Every BLM district in Oregon is working on watersheds, as are private landowners throughout the state."It's their working together that's making a difference. On nearby Salt Creek," he says, "the BLM began the watershed rehabilitation work there, but it wasn't until a private rancher also did some that the water began to flow yearround.""After all," he says, "streams don't care if they're on public or private land."</text>
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<text>By Fritz ThompsonJOURNAL STAFF WRITERNew Mexico impounded more Canadian River water than it was entitled to in 1988, a federal water expert said in a final report released last week.The report arose from a suit filed against New Mexico by Texas and Oklahoma, which said those states were deprived of water that should have flowed into their reservoirs.Special master Jerome C. Muys, who was appointed to examine the case in 1988, issued the report and a "recommended decree," which will eventually be referred to the U.S. Supreme Court for a final ruling.According to Carl Slingerland of the state Engineer's Office, New Mexico has not yet decided whether it will file objections to the report.The three states have been arguing for more than three years about the amount of water impounded in Ute Reservoir on the Canadian River near Logan, N.M.In the spring of 1988, Muys said, New Mexico impounded about 1,800 acre feet, more than it was entitled to. The reservoir at that time held 232,000 acre feet.In his recommendations, however, Muys did not propose immediate penalties against New Mexico, nor did he suggest that water be released from Ute Reservoir as back payment to Texas and Oklahoma.New Mexico officials in the state Engineer's Office were neither dismayed nor elated at the report. "The recommended outcome," said lead attorney Eric Biggs, "appears to be a draw."According to the Canadian River Compact, an agreement signed by the three states and Congress in the early 1950s, New Mexico was limited to 200,000 acre feet of water from the lower reaches of,the river.The lower reaches are located below Conchas Reservoir.Conchas Reservoir is northeast of Tucumcari and upstream from Ute Reservoir. It was built in 1939, and the compact assigned it all upstream flows, reaching to the headwaters on the New Mexico-Colorado border.New Mexico built Ute Reservoir in 1963 and enlarged it in 1984.Texas and Oklahoma complained that the enlargement allowed New Mexico to impound more waterΓÇö242,000 acre feetΓÇöthan it was entitled to, and that 42,000 acre feet should have been allowed to proceed downstream to them.The 42,000 acre feet is equal to about five years' worth of municipal water for a city that has a population of about 33,000.Texas wants the Canadian River water to impound at Lake Meredith, and Oklahoma wants the water for Eufala Lake. Part of the drainage includes the North Canadian River, which flows only into Oklahoma and is used by Oklahoma City.In one of the key issues of the case, Muys agreed with New Mexico that a reservoir should not be measured by its capacity but by its actual water storage. The water falls under different categories, including conservation, silt control and dead pool, unused water below the level of an outlet.The three states had also had protracted arguments about the origins of water in Ute Reservoir. New Mexico had contended that water going over the spillway at Conchas and flowing downstream to Ute,should not be counted as part of the allowable 200,000 acre feet.Muys, however, said the state is limited to storing 200,000 acre feet below Conchas Dam "regardless of point of origin in New Mexico."Muys also said part of the 200,000 allowable acre feet should include about 6,700 acre feet stored in 11 other small reservoirs such as Clayton Lake and Hittson Reservoir. He agreed with New Mexico's contention that 63 other even smaller reservoirs should not be counted.He directed the three states to attempt to agree on the amount of water in Ute Reservoir to be designated as the desilting pool. The amount of water in this category is important because it is not included in the 200,000 acre foot limit.Muy's report scolds the states for failing to arrive at a settlement on their own.Muys said the states had not effectively used the Canadian River Compact Commission to resolve their differences in the past. He suggested that the Supreme Court refuse to allow states to sue each other in the future unless they certify that good-faith negotiations had been attempted.Thompson, Fritz. "Report Says N.M. Tapped Too Much Canadian River Water." Albuquerque Journal. 21 October 1990. F1.</text>
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<text>Thompson, Fritz. "Report Says N.M. Tapped Too Much Canadian River Water." Albuquerque Journal. 21 October 1990. F1.</text>
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<text>WATER FACT SHEETU.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIORFederal-State Cooperative Water Resources ProgramWHAT IS THE COOPERATIVE PROGRAM?The enormity and complexity of appraising the Nation's water resources preclude accomplishing the task by Federal efforts alone. Similarly, State and local officials working independently do not always relate to the larger regional aspects of the hydrologic system. Cooperative planning of data collection and investigations by local, State, and Federal officials permits a more balanced approach to water-related problems.The Federal-State Cooperative Program, a partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and State and local agencies, provides such a balance for water-resources investigations. The principal program objectives are: (l) to collect, on a systematic basis, data needed for the continuing determination and evaluation of the quantity, quality, and use of water resources in the United States, and (2) to appraise the availability and the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of surface and ground water through analytical and interpretive investigations. The resulting information forms the foundation for many of the Nation's water-resources management and planning activities. In addition, the information can trigger an early warning for the detection of emerging water problems.The first cooperative water-resource investigation was started with the State of Kansas in 1895. In 1905, Congress appropriated funds specifically for cooperative studies, which marked the official beginning of the program. In 1928, Congress gave formal recognition to the Federal-State partnership and limited the Federal financial contribution for cooperative water-resources studies to no more than 50 percent of the funds for eachinvestigation .WHAT TYPES OF COOPERATING AGENCIES PARTICIPATE?In fiscal year 1983, more than 800 cooperators were included in the program with the USGS (see table 1). State, county, and municipal agencies participate, as do interstate compact organizations, conservation districts, water-supply districts, sanitary districts, drainage districts, flood-control districts, and similar organizations.WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF THE COOPERATIVE PROGRAM?Hydrologic investigations carried out by the USGS in partnership with other public agencies provide data and information that are available to the public and are essential to water-resources planning, development, and management. Through the pooling of support, the USGS is able to work toward hydrologic understanding to the mutual benefit of all levels of government and at substantial savings.Information developed in the Cooperative Program has relevance to potential and emerging long-term problems, such as water supply, waste disposal, energy development, and environmental protection. Since common methods and techniques are used, the information is also relevant to problems having interstate, regional, or international significance. The information furnishes the basis required to carry out interstate and international compacts, Federal law and court decrees, congressionally mandated studies, regional and national water-resources assessments, and planning activities.The benefits of the program are demonstrated by the extent to which other agencies apply the information produced. For example, the National Weather Service utilizes streamflow and water-level information from some 2,200 USGS-operated gaging stations for their flood-forecasting systems. More than 40 percent of the funds for the support of these stations are derived from the USGS Cooperative Program.WHAT ARE SOME CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE COOPERATIVE PROGRAM?People who are developing or interpreting water policy will find that the Cooperative Program is "policyTable 1.ΓÇöNumber of cooperators in the FY 1983 Federal-State Cooperative ProgramNumber of cooperators, FY 1983 State County Municipal Other Indian TotalAlabama 5 1 1 ...... ...... 7Alaska 6 ....... 9 ...... ...... 15Arizona 2 3 1 7 . . . 13Arkansas 4 .... .... ...... ...... 4California 18 46 15 26 2 107Colorado 3 11 11 25 1 51Connecticut 1 . . . 6 5 . . . 12Delaware 2 1 ..... ...... ...... 3DC. 1 ...... ...... .....Florida 7 25 25 19 ....... 76Georgia 3 4 4 1 . . . 12Hawaii 3 2 ..... ...... ...... 5American Samoa 1 ............ .....Guam 1 ............ ..... Northern Marianas 1 ... ... ... ...Trust Territory 6 ... ... ... ... 6Idaho 8 1 ..... 4 1 14Illinois 4 1 2 1 ....... 8Indiana 4 ....... 3 ............ 7Iowa 4 . . . 9 2 . . . 15Kansas 5 1 2 4 . . . 12Kentucky 4 ....... 1 ............ 5Louisiana 6 ....... 1 ............ 7Maine 3 ....... 1 1 ....... 5Maryland 5 9 3 2 . . . 19Massachusetts 6 ............ 2 ....... 8Michigan 3 7 10 4 . . . 24Minnesota 8 2 3 8 ....... 21Mississippi 5 4 2 2 . . . 13Missouri 5 1 2 1 ....... 9Montana 9 ............ ..... 2 11Nebraska 4 . . . 1 8 . . . 13Nevada 4 3 3 1 . . . 11New Hampshire 1 ............ 1 ....... 2New Jersey 1 4 2 3 . . . 10New Mexico 4 . . . 4 3 1 12New York 12 16 9 7 1 45North Carolina 4 ....... 6 ............ 10North Dakota 6 2 ..... ............ 8Ohio 3 ....... 2 3 ....... 8Oklahoma 5 . . . 7 5 . . . 17Oregon 4 5 6 1 2 18Pennsylvania 8 4 5 3 ....... 20Puerto Rico 9 ............ 2 ....... 11Rhode Island 2 ............ 1 ....... 3South Carolina 5 . . . 4 2 . . . 11South Dakota 2 . . . 1 3 . . . 6Tennessee 3 3 5 ............ 11Texas 2 12 23 25 ....... 62Utah 5 2 ..... ............ 7Vermont I ............ .....Virginia 3 1 3 1 ....... 8Virgin Islands 3 ............ ............ 3Washington 3 8 8 1 7 27West Virginia 4 ....... 1 ............ 5Wisconsin 5 4 3 2 3 17Wyoming 6 ....... 1 ..... Total 252 183 205 186 20 84U.S. Geological Survey/Department of the Interior. Water Fact Sheet. "Federal-State Cooperative Water Resources Program." April 1984.</text>
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<text>U.S. Geological Survey/Department of the Interior. Water Fact Sheet. "Federal-State Cooperative Water Resources Program." April 1984.</text>
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<text>By Leah Beth WardOF THE JOURNAL'S CAPITOL BUREAUSANTA FEΓÇöMembers of a House agriculture committee recommended three bills Friday that they say will help resolve a nagging problem with the Pecos River and avoid other costly interstate water fights.House Bills 336 and 337 would set up the Statewide Water Protection Act. The act would create a loan fund and an investment fund though the issuance of up to $50 million in general obligation bonds. Voters would be asked to approve the bond issue at the 1992 general election.Rep. Richard Knowles, R-Roswell, sponsor of the bills, said the loan fund would provide money to people throughout the state who would agree to make investments in conservation projects or any type of water project that would help the state avoid interstate water litigation.Knowles said the investment fund would be administered by the state engineer to purchase water rights throughout the state."These are the long-range solutions to water problems throughout the state," Knowles said.A shorter-term solution to the Pecos River problem is proposed in House Bill 378, sponsored by Rep. Joe Stell, D-Carlsbad.Under the Pecos River Compact between New Mexico and Texas, New Mexico must deliver a certain amount of water every year to Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that New Mexico must deliver water and not cash.Drought conditions are creating a meager flow to the state line, which means another sizable water debt to Texas could be in the making. Undersized deliveries already have cost the state $14 million.To avoid future debts and to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the state would like to buy water rights along the river to increase the flow. Stell's bill proposes to come up with the money to buy the water rights by getting $4 million from the general fund, up to $8 million in severance tax bonds and $1 million from the Irrigation Works Construction Fund."This is a great opportunity to resolve this thing with Texas," said Hubert Quintana of the Pecos River Pumpers Association in Hagerman.Ward, Leah Beth. "Bills Aim at N.M.'s Nagging Water Problems." Albuquerque Journal. 16 February 1991. E5.</text>
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<text>Ward, Leah Beth. "Bills Aim at N.M.'s Nagging Water Problems." Albuquerque Journal. 16 February 1991. E5.</text>
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<text>Water resource management includes the enactment of a water pricing policy as a mechanism for water conservation, particularly during high use periods. A conservation-oriented pricing structure can provide an economic incentive both for the use of water-saving technologies and for the modification of water use habits. Included below are the most common pricing methods in use.Traditional rate forms are based on average past costs of water use and include:fixed rateΓÇöCustomers are charged the same dollar amount per period, regardless of the quantity consumed. Used in areas where water use is not metered, fixed rates tend to encourage use.uniform rateΓÇöThe same rate per unit is paid by all utility customers, regardless of user class. Because the cost of providing water varies by user, over time uniform rates may subsidize some customers and penalize others.declining block rateΓÇöThis rate structure consists of a schedule of fixed charges per unit of consumption which decreases as the level of consumption increases. By signaling to the user that on a per gallon basis, the more water they use, the less the water costs, this rate form discourages water conservation.Conservation-oriented rate forms are derived from average incremental costs associated with each service component and customer class and include:seasonal rateΓÇöUsually across-the-board higher rates are imposed during the summer months, when demand increases due to outdoor water use. This rate structure can provide an inducement to conserve but may also unnecessarily penalize low demand users.excess use rateΓÇöUniform rates are charged for a base amount of water. This water use represents normal indoor water use and is usually established according to each customer's average consumption for the winter quarter. A higher rate is charged for consumption in excess of a percentage of this base. An excess use fee charged during the summer presents a clear economic signal to reduce outdoor water use during peak demand periods.increasing block rateΓÇöUnit rates increase as use increases. This type of rate form varies from a summer one-step block (similar to an excess use charge) to multiple blocks. The method creates a rather obvious economic incentive for customers to reduce water use.Edwards Underground Water District. Exerpt from Water Conservation Working Handbook. </text>
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<text>By Florence WilliamsIn 1871, settlers on Colorado's semi-arid plains violated the ancient laws of water allotment practiced in the East: They dug a canal diverting water from the Cache la Poudre River near Greeley to irrigate land not contiguous to the stream.Two years later, settlers in Fort Collins, 25 miles upriver, did the same. There was enough water for everyone until the dry year of 1875. Out of the fierce battle that ensued was born a new, Western law, based loosely on early California mining rights. It was called the doctrine of prior appropriation.Fifty years later, farmers in the Cache la Poudre basin made history again by forming the state's first water conservancy district.Created in the wake of the Dust Bowl and in an era of New Deal largesse, the district brought local farmers together to plan a major water project called the Colorado-Big Thompson.In close partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, known simply as "Northern," collected taxes on 1.5 million acres of property and built the colossal transmountain diversion project. The district became a model for hundreds of rural water-developing entities all over the West.Although once steeped in New Deal and Jeffersonian principles, Northern and other water districts like it now cater mostly to large-farm interests.Keeping the rhetoric of the past alive, the districts still propose huge projects, they still act mostly on behalf of agriculture, and they still dewater streams with little concern for fish and wildlife.But somewhere between the Dust Bowl and the Reagan era, the federal largesse faded, as did the dominance of irrigated farming in the West's economy.As a result, the West's conservancy districts face an assault from two fronts. Urban dwellers, outdoor enthusiasts and environmentalists attack what they perceive to be archaic values controlling the water of the rural West.On the state level, the self-governing districts are losing some of their credibility among legislators, auditors and constitutional lawyers. The verystates that created the districts have begun to question their relevance in a changing West.But as outsiders cast a critical glance, the districts march on, unwavering. Northern has returned to the lifespring of its origins, the Cache la PoudreRiver, to propose a controversial storage project.Other large districts, such as the Salt Lake Conservancy District in Utah and the Central Arizona Conservancy District, wield enormous power by controlling vast amounts of land and public funds.The West's smaller, more numerous districts, operating largely in the shadows of the rural landscape, function mostly as water development lobbyists, kept alive year after year with the income from the property taxes they levy.Opponents to districts throughout the West find themselves battling aninstitutional fortress.Districts have immense powersThe 1937 state act that created Northern and its offspring gave them immense powers: for the delivery of water, they may tax all the property within their boundaries; condemn or purchase any property, possession or water right; acquire, construct and control any facility; fix water rates; enter into contracts with the federal government and assume bonded indebtedness.A conservancy district (there are 49 in Colorado alone) begins life like any other "special" district.A group of citizens who want somethingΓÇöa cemetery, golf course or mosquito controlΓÇösends around a petition, obtains a few signatures, and with approval from a county judge, starts collecting taxes. The group's board of directors is normally subject to a popular election.But in Colorado and several other Western states, a water conservancy district, unlike any other special district, does not have elected trustees; rather, a local judge appoints a board, usually made up of irrigating farmers whom he or she believes possess singular knowledge of the complexities of water.Depending on your point of view, the result of this system has been a closed, entrenched regime, or one that is stable and experienced. For example, although they need reappointment every four years, Northern's current trustees have served the board an average of 17.8 years. Their agenda has changed little since 1937.That agenda is the construction of one large project followed by the construction of another. After building the Colorado-Big Thompson diversion, Northern's board members created a municipal subdivision in 1973 to build the Windy Gap project supplying water to the cities of the north Front Range.The rural district saw the urban project as a way to defend the irrigation water in the Colorado-Big Thompson system. Conceived when the Front Range was rapidly growing, Windy Gap was intended to prevent cities in the district from buying up irrigation water.But the explosive urban growth that Northern predicted failed to appear. Six years prior to construction of the Windy Gap project in 1981, three of the six cities in the district started to pull out.Fort Collins sold its entire allotment, and Loveland and Estes Park half of theirs; the buyer was the Platte River Power Authority. In the last two years, Estes Park has sold most of its remaining allotment to a Denver real estate developer.Two months ago, Greeley also threw in the towel, selling almost a quarter of its Windy Gap water to a Denver suburb, Broomfield.Monte Vavra, a finance officer for the city of Estes Park, said the unused water was too expensive to keep. Although Estes Park agreed in the 1970s to buy 4,000 acre-feet from the project, the city now finds it needs only about 300 acre-feet of Windy Gap water, said Vavra.Fortunately for the cities of the district, the impending veto of the Two Forks dam is already creating a small market among Denver suburbs for the unused Windy Gap water.The district originally planned to deliver 48,000 acre-feet of water annually to the cities. Today Windy Gap delivers only 5,000 acre-feet, less than one-eighth of its potential. Northern's municipal subdistrict now faces a debt exceeding $112 million.Yet another mega-projectSo when Northern proposed yet another mega-project to secure water for its farmers, this time on the Cache La Poudre River, it raised some eyebrows."The Poudre project is a joke," said Dan Luecke, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund in Boulder, Colo. "It's so expensive, and it's not necessary."But Northern's public information officer, Brian Werner, said that even with extra Windy Gap water, the farmers will come up short in a major, 1-in-25 year drought.Besides, Northern would like to get to the Poudre ahead of the Denver Water Board, especially with the likely demise of Two Forks.Said Northern's project engineer Karl Dreher: "Because of our water laws, if we don't use the water, downstream users will eventually call on it. We know the water is there today, and we don't know it's there for the future."The proposal includes a 400 foot-high, 200,000 acre-foot storage facility that would inundate over seven miles of the river and part of a popular hiking trail, flood 33 private homes, and require the relocation of part of a highway.Group fights a damFriends of the Poudre, a local group fighting the district, worries that the dam would mar the only river in Colorado that has received protection under the national Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.The group's founder, Gary Kimsey, says the Poudre project would destroy a wild trout area and, like the proposed Two Forks dam, affect whooping crane habitat on the Platte in Nebraska.Because conservancy districts operate with so little involvement from the public, said Kimsey, environmental concerns such as these are rarely a management priority.So far, Friends of the Poudre is fighting a lonely battle. The national environmental groups that opposed Two Forks find it hard to take Northern's proposal seriously because of its expense.Estimated at over $6,000 an acre-foot, Poudre water would cost even more than water from Two Forks. Northern's own officials doubt that they will be able to fund the project without substantial help from a local city. Not surprisingly, no cities have come forward.The district might have to turn to its arch competitor, Denver, for help. "We're realists," said Werner. "We don't want to supply Denver, but Denver has lot of money."Northern may prefer to give its water to Denver rather than face the prospect of a decade without a project, speculated Len Loomans, president of Friends of the Poudre. 'They really want to build," said Loomans. "It justifies their existence."Loomans would like to see Northern's inbred management infused with some new blood. Because his organization's views were not represented on Northern's board, Loomans protested the recent reappointment of a trustee member in favor of an experienced, environmental candidate. But Northern, said Loomans, was not ready to hear its constituents.Such controversies over values and fair representation are not unique to Northern. Jeanne Englert, a self-proclaimed populist haranguer, has been contesting conservancy districts throughout Colorado for the past six years.Englert, who is not a farmer, said she resents doling out tax money for water projects on rivers she wants to see spared. Englert and her lawyers assert that because she cannot elect her district's officials, taxation is unjust and possibly unconstitutional.Last year, Englert drafted a proposal to the Colorado legislature asking that all special districts be treated equally, with elected rather than appointed officials. Elections, she said, would challenge the power of an irrigating elite making decisions for the non-farming majority. Said Englert: "The real people have no voice."Colorado legislators, however, voted the proposal down. They may hope to avoid what happened in South Dakota in 1976, when farmers and other citizens who opposed the Oahe Irrigation Project managed to elect a majority of the Oahe Conservancy Subdistrict (HCN, 9/26/88).The new board promptly held seven public meetings on the Oahe project, accumulated a mass of testimony against it, and asked the Carter administration and Congress to suspend funding.Colorado's district board members especially fear democracy when it arrives in the shape of environmentalism.Said alfalfa farmer Don Schwindt, trustee of the Animas-La Plata Conservancy District: "I can respect people who say the election process is the way to go, but I don't think it's a good idea. It would be possible for the environmental community to stack some boards with anti-water development people, and that could hinder the workings of development."What Schwindt considers a hindrance, others call fair dialogue. "The politics of water are changing fast," noted Carolyn Johnson, a Denver water consultant currently working for the Friends of the Earth Foundation."The districts have different constituencies nowΓÇöwe're talking urbanized citiesΓÇöwith different needs and desires."How should districts be run?Johnson emphasized, however, that elections alone are not necessarily the answer. For example, in New Mexico, a state that modified its law in 1976 to allow the election of conservancy board members, things have not improved."I thought this was the greatest thing," said Tim DeYoung, a public administration professor and water policy analyst at the University of New Mexico. "But ever since 1976 the conservancy districts have gone to hell. They're rife with controversy, bribery, lawsuits, corruption. Democracy is the worst thing that ever happened to the districts here," he said. "Before it was inequitable, but at least they did their work."DeYoung said New Mexico's Department of Finance and Management is now cracking down on the districts by auditing their budgets.Corruption plagues many districts, whether managers are elected or not. In Utah, state legislators received so many complaints last year about the Salt Lake Water Conservancy District that they ordered an investigation of finances and hiring practices.What they found was a list of abuses so long that they passed a bill terminating all districts' autonomy, reverting their management to state and city authorities"We found massive misuse of public funds," said a source working on the investigation who wished to remain unidentified. He cited instances of bribery, favoritism, overstuffed salaries and facilities and violations of affirmative action."The chief issue was unaccountability," said the legislative source. "Conservancy districts are a layer of government virtually unknown. They have the same powers as cities, but they're not even listed in the blue pages."Utah is holding off on the termination bill until the task force looks into other options, he said, noting that the districts will be "very hard to dismantle." Utah's districts will probably be reorganized in such a way that they will have to answer to more constituents, maybe through being absorbed into a more traditional form of government, he said.Similar investigations are under way in Colorado. The state auditor generalhas made a report of outstanding debt accrued by special districts. Further scrutiny will probably follow, said state accountant Holly Boslick.Inevitably, Western water conservancy districts may be dismantled altogether, said Luecke of the Environmental Defense Fund. "They have run out of good projects, good will and federal money," he observed. "They're in trouble."Will this century's Cache La Poudre battle unearth a whole new water doctrine? Probably not But the pioneers of 1875 stand newly challenged. Agriculture, once the dominant economy in the West, now trails behind services, manufacturing and tourism in Colorado's gross product.Water users and the tax payers supporting them no longer live in purely agricultural communities, and the bodies set up to govern the water may no longer serve the best interests of,the public. Western water conservancy districts, long sheltered from public debate, have finally entered the fray.Williams, Florence. "Trying to Keep That Old-Time Faith." High Country News. 4 December 1989.</text>
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<text>Williams, Florence. "Trying to Keep That Old-Time Faith." High Country News. 4 December 1989.</text>
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<text>zzzPhase 1 Project WATER SUPPLYCOLORADO Southwestern Colorado will receive 123,700 acre-feet of project water during an average year. Of this total, 41,700 acre-feet will be for municipal and industrial purposes, as shown in the following table.Water User Project Water (acre-feet)City of Durango 2,500Durango rural 2,000La Plata area rural 2,000Animas-LaPlata Water Conservancy District 2,700Southern Ute Indian Tribe 26,500Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe 6,000 Total 41,700An annual average of 55,800 acre-feet of project water will be provided for irrigation of non-lndian and Indian land in Colorado, as shown in the following table. Project Water Irrigable LandWater User (acre-feet) (acres)Non-Indian full service 37,900 21,122Non-lndian supplemental service 15,300 14,000Southern Ute Indian Tribe full service 2,600 1,413 Total 55,800 36,535On completion of Phase 1 the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe will receive 25,500 acre-feet of water and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe will receive 700 acre-feet of water from Ridges Basin Reservoir. The water will be available for lease or temporary use to the extent permitted by Federal and State law until Phase 2 irrigation facilities are completed to irrigate Indian Tribal land. The water supply will be subject to the same shortages as irrigation water supplies.NEW MEXICONorthwestern New Mexico will receive 49,200 acre-feet of project water in an average year. Of this total, 38,400 acre-feet will be for municipal and industrial purposes, as shown in the following table. Project WaterWater User (acre-feet)San Juan Water Commission 30,800Navajo NationΓÇöShiprock area 7,600 Total 38,400An annual average total of 9,900 acre-feet of project water will be provided for the irrigation of non-lndian land in the La Plata River drainage, as shown in the following table. Project Water Irrigable LandWater User (acre-feet) (acres)Non-lndian full service 6,900 2,630Non-Indian supplemental service 3,000 3,650 Total 9,900 6,280 On completion of Phase 1, the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe will receive 900 acre-feet of water from Ridges Basin Reservoir. The water will be available for lease or temporary use to the extent permitted by Federal and State law until Phase 2 irrigation facilities are completed to irrigate Tribal land in New Mexico. The water supply will be subject to the same shortages as irrigation water supplies.</text>
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<text>zzzzzzDeclared right: one that was perfected prior to the area coming under the State Engineer's administrative control and was subsequently filed with the State Engineer. From the standpoint of ground water, State Engineer control was asserted with the declaration of the ground water basin (after which a well may be drilled only with the permission of the State Engineer); for surface water, State Engineer authority dates from the enactment of the Territorial Water Code in 1907. Permitted right: one that is established through the following procedure: a. The applicant applies to the State Engineer for permission to divert a specificd amount of water at a specified location. b. The State Engineer grants that application by means of issuing a permit to carry out the diversion, subject to certain conditions. c. The right-holder then drills the well or otherwise carries out the diversion and, within a time period specified in the permit, provides proof to the State Engineer that the diversion was completed and the water is being applied to beneficial use. The initial permit-with-conditions followed by demonstrations by the applicant that these conditions have been met constitutes a permitted right. Licensed right: Obtaining a license takes the permit one step further. The permitted right-holder presents to the State Engineer a survey by a licensed surveyor or analysis carried out by a professional engineer, as required, showing all aspects of the diversion and quantifying the amount of water diverted. The State Engineer critically examines these proofs and agrees with or corrects the amount of water held by the permittee. The permittee is then issued a license to appropriate thc specificd amount of water at a specified place for a particular purpose. More than one place and purpose of use can be covered in a single license. Adjudicated right: A water rights adjudication is equivalent to a quiet title suit for real estate. Water rights are considered real estate, although a water right is the right to use water which ultimately belongs to the State, rather than granting outright ownership of the water. A right is not firmly established until it has been adjudicatcd. Domestic right: Domestic rights are also referred to as "72-12-1" (previously 75-11-1 ) rights after the section of New Mexico law under which they are established. The State Engineer Rules and Regulations developed pursuant to Section 72- l2-l of the New Mexico Statutes Annotated (NMSA) allow an individual to pump three acre-feet per year of groundwater for domestic use or stock-watering. It should be noted that three acre-feet amounts to approximately one million gallons - a very substantial amount of water in an arid state. Many water lawyers argue that 72-12-1 "rights" are not rights, but fall into a unique category of allowed water use. Among other differcnccs, these "rights" generally are not transferable. Vested right: an ill-defincd term that is sometimes used to dcscribe a declared, permitted or licensed water right in which case "vested" simply means that the right is formally recognized, although not necessarily quantified. Another definition of a "vested" right is a right that has been put to beneficial use, particularly when the use originated before State Enginecr authority existed. There are several categories of vested rights that exist outside of rights established through state law. They are: a. Interstate Compacts. New Mexico is a participant in a number of multi-state compacts to share the flow of its rivers that rise in or run through neighboring states. The amount of streamflow assigned to downstream states must be delivered before the New Mexico State Engineer can assign rights from those rivers or their tributaries to instate applicants. These agreements affect groundwater as well as surface water, since ground water and surface water are interrelated. Interstate compacts cover the Rio Grande, Pecos, Colorado, La Plata and Canadian Rivers, the Upper Colorado Basin and Costillo Creek. b. Federal reserved water rights. The legislation establishing Federal reservations such as national forests, national parks and Bureau of Land Management grazing lands granted sufficient water to those lands by inference for them to fulfill their purposes. Thc amount of those Federal reserved rights has rarely been quantified. c. Indian Water rights. Ten percent of the land in New Mexico is in Indian reservations. Just as the land was "reserved" for the various tribes and pueblos, the Winters doctrine (named aftcr the 1908 United States Supreme Court case of Winters v. United States) established that sufficient water was reserved by inference for the reservations to be viable places for the Indians to live. Since Indian tribes are indigenous populations, by the doctrine of prior appropriation their water rights are generally viewed as taking precedence over all others. d. Pueblo water rights.Not to be confused with Indian water rights, pueblo rights were granted to certain towns ("pueblos") before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The only town in New Mexico with confirmed pueblo right is Las Vegas in San Miguel County. The Green Fire Report. Publication of New Mexico Environmental Law Center. November/December 1990.</text>
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<text>zzzzzzzzNew Mexico Glossary of Water TermsAcequia: from Spanish, meaning a community irrigation ditch.Acre-Foot: the quantity of water which will cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot; 43,560 cubic feet; equal to 325,851 gallons of water.Adjudication: a formal court proceeding to determine the validity and extent of a water right.Alluvial Fan: a low, outspread, relatively flat to gently sloping mass of loose rock material, shaped like an open fan, deposited by a stream at the place where it issues from a narrow mountain valley.Apportionment: the division and distribution of water according to a plan.Appropriator: a person who takes either surface water or ground water and applies it to a beneficial use.Aquifer: a saturated underground geologic formation of rock or other porous material capable of storing water and transmitting it to wells or springs.Artesian Well: a well tapping confined ground water. Water in the well rises above the level of the water table under artesian pressure, but does not necessarily reach the surface.Basin: a physiographic feature or subsurface structure capable of collecting, storing, and discharging water by reason of its shape and characteristics.Beneficial use: generally, all uses including agricultural, commercial, industrial and recreational are considered beneficial; the exception is willful waste of water.Bolson: a term applied in the desert regions of the Southwest to an extensive, flat depression almost or completely surrounded by mountains from which drainage has no surface outlet.Closed Basin: an enclosed area having no drainage outlets and from which water escapes only by evaporation, as in an arid region.Declared Ground Water Basin: an area with definite hydrogeologic boundaries that has been designated by the state engineer to prevent the impairment of existing water rights and to ensure the orderly development of water rights.Depletion: that part of a withdrawal that has been evaporated, transpired, incorporated into crops or products, consumed by man or livestock, or otherwise removed.Diversion: a man-made construction that diverts water from its natural source for beneficial use.Drainage Basin: the entire area drained by a stream or system of connecting streams so that all the stream flow originating in the area is discharged through a single outlet.Evapotranspiration: loss of water from land through transpiration of plants and evaporation from the soil.Fish and Wildlife Uses: includes evaporation from single purpose fish and wildlife reservoirs and lakes, irrigation of crops grown on wildlife refuges and water used in the operation of hatchery fish ladders.Federal Reserved Rights Doctrine: water reserved for a particular use on a federal reservation; supersedes a state-granted water right.Fully Appropriated: when all available water has been reserved for existing water rights.Ground Water: water located below the surface of the earth, including underground streams.Ground Water Mining: when water is being taken out of the ground water supply at a rate greatly exceeding the rate the supply is being replenished.Industrial Uses: includes water used for self-supplied manufacturing and processing enterprises, and construction projects.Instream Use: use of water that does not require withdrawal or diversion from its natural watercourse; for example, the use of water for navigation, recreation, and support of fish and wildlife.Interstate Compact: an agreement made between two or more states, which is approved by Congress and the president, on the division of waters in rivers and streams that flow from one state into another.Irrigated Agricultural Uses: includes all farm crops to which ground water or surface water was applied during the growing season. Does not include self-supplied nurseries and greenhouses, self-supplied golf courses or irrigation of crops grown on state and federal wildlife refuges.Litigation: legal action.Mineral Uses: includes water used by self-supplied extractive industries. Water used for sand and gravel washing, ready-mix concrete, oil and gas well drilling, secondary recovery of oil, natural gas compressor stations, oil refineries and gas processing plants is included in this category.Municipal Uses: includes public and private water utilities in cities and densely steeled fringe areas which have a population of 2,500 inhabitants or more and self-supplied residences and mobile home parks within city limits. Does not include water used by self-supplied military installations.Phreatophytes: a long-rooted plant that absorbs water from the water table or other permanent ground supply.Playa: a dried up, vegetation free, flat area composed of thin, evenly stratified sheets of fine clay, silt or sand in which water accumulates and is quickly evaporated, usually leaving deposits of soluble salts.Power Uses: includes all self-supplied power generating facilities.Prior Appropriation: doctrine that entitles the first person who diverts water and puts it to beneficial use the right to that water; first in time, first in right.Pueblo Water Right: the paramount right to the use of water in the pueblo limits for use of the city; supersedes state-granted water rights.Public Welfare: broadly defined consideration to include cultural and community values.Riparian Doctrine: the system of water law based on English common law allowing landowners adjoining lakes and rivers to withdraw "reasonable amounts" of water so long as downstream landowners are not unreasonably damaged.Recharge: the addition of water to an aquifer by infiltration, either directly into the aquifer or indirectly by way of another rock formation; recharge may be artificial, as when water is injected through wells or spread over permeable surfaces for the purpose of recharging an aquifer.Recreational Uses: includes self-supplied land based recreation in state and federal recreation areas; private campgrounds, recreational vehicle parks, organizational camps and resorts; evaporation from single purpose recreation lakes and ponds; and irrigation of self-supplied parks and golf courses.Reservoir Evaporation: evaporation from reservoirs and lakes other than single purpose fish and wildlife or recreation reservoirs and lakes.Retired Water Right: a right withdrawn from use.Return Flow: water diverted for a use that finds its way back to its source of supply.Saline Water: water having mineral content greater than 1,000 mg/l.Semiarid: climate characterized by little yearly rainfall and by the growth of short grasses and shrubs.Surface Water: all water located on the surface of the land.Water Right: a legal right to take state waters for a beneficial purpose.Winters Doctrine: cornerstone of American Indian Water Rights; implies a reservation of water for the Indians' present and future use and exempts Indian reservations from state water law.Withdrawal: the quantity of water taken from a surface water or ground water supply. A diversion is the same as a withdrawal.Second New Mexico Town Hall of May 15-18, 1988. "Water: Lifeblood of New Mexico." P. O. Box 25387; Albuquerque, NM 87125. (505) 242-3205.</text>
