D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
February 2010
A Free Flow of Ideas
What does the Arizona Water Settlements Act mean to you and the water from your tap? Feb. 18 offers a double opportunity to get answers and share your opinions.
By Jim Kelly
Anne takes the coffee pot to the kitchen sink and fills it with cold water. She turns the handle and the water comes out. It's the same as every other morning. Anne never gives it a thought. Not a problem — not for now, at least.
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Canyon along the Gila. Photo from Jan Haley's book, Free Flow: The Gila River in New Mexico>, also featured in an exhibit at the Silver City Museum. |
She never considers the contrived, circuitous path the water takes to get to her coffee pot, nor does she ponder the vagaries of water rights law, or cumbersome words like "hydrology." Why should she?
"There's this pipe in the ground," she says, "and it brings the water from wherever the Town of Silver City gets it, through a bunch of other pipes, up and down all the streets in town, and finally it runs up to my house. What I do know is it costs more than I'd like to pay."
Anne is a pretty typical consumer of natural resources. All she really knows for sure is that the resources all cost more than she'd like.
Here in the Great Southwest, the availability and control of many resources have been the catalysts for many a challenge and many a battle — legal, intellectual and physical.
Mark Twain reportedly once said, "Whiskey's fer drinkin', and water's fer fightin'," and by most accounts, Twain got it right. But the fighting has gotten a lot more sophisticated and civilized here in the 21st century.
In Southwest New Mexico, in the counties of Grant, Catron, Luna and Hidalgo, a relatively new water issue is on the horizon. According to many participants in the regional water use decision-making process, the issue is bringing citizens together and fostering more mutual consideration and dialogue than any before it.
That issue is the Arizona Water Settlements Act (AWSA), a federal law that addresses New Mexico's control over the flow of water in the Gila and San Francisco rivers. The act will, for once and finally, invite Anne and a great many other citizens to participate in water supply and use decisions here in the Great Southwest.
While much has been written about the AWSA and the federal money attached to it, here's the issue in a nutshell.
In 2004, the AWSA provided New Mexico with potential for the use of an additional 140,000 acre-feet of Gila and San Francisco River water, in any 10-year period. Along with the provision for additional water comes somewhere between $66 million and $128 million in federal funding, to serve water supply demands in Grant, Luna, Catron and Hidalgo counties.
All that has to happen for this water and money to come the way of Southwest New Mexico is for all the various interest groups, called stakeholders, to come to some kind of consensus about how to balance ecological interests with development interests, and put together projects that best serve that balance.
Arriving at that consensus is a complicated process, given that the AWSA and its decision-making process do not exist in a vacuum. Not only are the state of Arizona and its water rights issues involved, but even California water rights are a vague factor, since Arizona also shares water rights issues with that state.
February seems to be a marked month for the discussion of the AWSA in Grant, Luna, Catron and Hidalgo counties, and its impact on New Mexico's neighboring state to the west.
The Silver City Museum has recently launched a remarkable exhibit featuring striking photographs of the Gila River from a new Jan Haley book titled Free Flow: The Gila River in New Mexico. The show is accompanied by a constantly running DVD, featuring many principals in the AWSA decision-making process. The speakers give a variety of viewpoints on the history of the Gila River, and their opinions of best-and worst-case scenarios regarding the outcome of the AWSA.
The date of Feb. 18 is one to mark as particularly important on your events calendar.
On that date, the decision-making panel, "The AWSA Stakeholders Group," convenes a morning meeting at the Grant County Government Building. Plus, at 6:30 p.m. on the 18th, a free-to-the-general-public AWSA forum will be presented at Western New Mexico University's Global Resource Center. The public is being invited to participate actively in both the meeting in the morning and the forum in the evening, to provide input into the AWSA decision-making process.
The evening forum is being offered by the Western Institute for Lifelong Learning (WILL), and is titled "Arizona Water Settlements Act (AWSA): The Basics." The program will feature representatives from the AWSA stakeholders' panel, and the primary speaker is Santa Fe attorney Peter White, one of New Mexico's most knowledgeable water issues experts. White will offer a comprehensive overview of the general legal history of the Gila River and, more specifically, some legal aspects of the AWSA.
Other forum panelists include Glenwood rancher and Catron County Commissioner Hugh B. McKeen, Allyson Siwik of the Gila Conservation Coalition, Grant County Planner Anthony Gutierrez and Charles "Tink" Jackson from the office of the New Mexico State Engineer's office in Deming. Each panelist will bring his or her particular view of the AWSA and its possible consequences, as well as answer questions from the audience.
The general public has a lot at stake in the decisions made by the AWSA Stakeholders group. The Feb. 18 morning stakeholders meeting and evening WILL forum can go a long way to educate and enlighten citizens on the ins and outs and the whys and wherefores of complex and far-reaching New Mexico water laws and issues.
In an interview, attorney and water-issues expert Peter White offers a brief historical perspective: "In New Mexico, as in most of the western states, there is still some element of old Spanish Colonial water law. This deals with the capturing, diverting and general 'taking' of ground and surface water for 'beneficial uses,' such as irrigation and municipal needs."
White notes that things get further complicated, particularly where surface water is concerned, because streams and rivers seldom respect state borders. The Gila River, for example, flows out of New Mexico, through Arizona, and joins the Colorado River at Yuma — or it used to, anyway.
Anyone driving west along Interstate 10 during the driest part of the year has noted the most often dusty remains of the Gila River as it makes its meager path southwest. Where did the water go? Chances are there may just not be enough water some of the year, and probably a good bit of what's left is being diverted for human purposes somewhere farther to the north.
Who gets to use this water? White explains, "Some law also goes back to the 1849 Gold Rush in California. 'Priority rights' refer to the first persons to establish a need for the water in question. If I get first rights to the water upstream from you, then I can to some degree control the water you can use downstream. We say 'to some degree,' because other legal decisions may impact the issue."
White also distinguishes between the three primary aspects of the AWSA, regarding water supply and use here in New Mexico. "There are legal, hydrologic and financial issues with the AWSA as it impacts southwestern New Mexico. There is a series of specific laws and rulings dating to 1935 regarding the water rights and hydrological relationships between New Mexico and Arizona. Additionally, there is the question of 'economic injury' to individual parties, including the state of Arizona downstream from New Mexico, but I'll get into these matters in more depth at the February forum.
"I'm sure there will be a lot of questions from the audience," he adds, "and I hope I and the other panelists can clear some things up and encourage participation in the stakeholders' meetings."
Many locals welcome that increased participation in the decision-making process. Gila Valley resident Mary Burton Riseley says, "There used to be almost a powerful mythological conflict over water issues in both Catron and Grant counties, but one of the great things coming out of the general AWSA discussion, and the stakeholders panel, too, is much more optimism — much more genuine mutual communication"
Traditional arguments have pitted conservationists who favor keeping the Gila a "wild river" against more development-oriented folks, who often contend that the Gila isn't really a "wild river" because historically it has always been diverted and channeled by agricultural dikes, canals and basins. Those divisions still exist, but Riseley notes that the need for a more civilized approach to problem-solving seems to be developing.
"Some of the projects currently being proposed have a definite appeal to both the environmentalists and the diversionists," she says.
Everyone involved in both the stakeholders' meeting and the AWSA forum stresses the importance of citizen participation in the events.
"We have 140,000 acre feet of water at stake here," comments WILL forum director Anne McCormick, "and given the intricacies of the issues, proposed projects and possible results of the AWSA, we in southwest New Mexico have a lot from which to benefit in this process."
The Feb. 18 AWSA Stakeholders meeting starts at 8:30 a.m., and is divided into three sessions. The first, from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., will deal with watershed restoration. The second session, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., will deal with conservation. The third session runs from 2-4 p.m., and deals with basic water infrastructure.
For further information on the group and some of the projects being proposed, go to www.awsaplanning.com All sessions will be held in the Grant County administration building on Hwy. 180.
The WILL forum will start at 6:30 p.m., and will be held in the auditorium of WNMU's Global Resource Center, at 12th and Kentucky Streets in Silver City. For more information on the forum, go to www.will-learning.com
The Silver City Museum's Gila River photo/DVD exhibit will run through April. |