In northern New Mexico, the small, family-owned Sipapu Ski Area is battling the little farming town of Dixon over water rights to the Rio Pueblo and Rio Embudo, tributaries of the Rio Grande. Plus, the endangered silvery minnow is forcing the water users of the Middle Rio Grande in New Mexico to reconsider the ways cities, towns, pueblos and farms have always made use of the river.
The Wayward West
Idaho Lt. Gov. Butch Otter can’t stay out of hot water. The Environmental Protection Agency recently socked Otter with an $80,000 fine for dredging 2.7 acres of wetlands and a stream channel without a permit. It was his third EPA violation since 1992. Otter told the Idaho Statesman he accepted responsibility for failing to secure…
Developer told to scale back
Developer Jim Mehen hoped to build a golf course and gated community of 300 luxury homes on his 407 acres near Flagstaff, Ariz. He’d revised his plans repeatedly in the past two years to meet county concerns. But misgivings about development in the volcanic caldera and wetland remained, and opposition to the project gathered momentum.…
Dudes on the dunes
-We struggled to scramble up near-vertical walls of loose sand,” writes Mark North in the online magazine Explore. “Still, the weight of the tent, beer, snowboard and snowboard boots on my backpack didn’t topple me over … At the summit, we’d swap snowshoes for snowboards … spray on a coat of Pledge to increase glide,…
Resort may crowd Mount Rainier
Ashford, Wash., a rural town of about 1,500 people that is only a stone’s toss from the western gate of Mount Rainier National Park, may soon have a big, new neighbor. Earlier this month, Pierce County endorsed plans for a $70 million, 400-acre resort that would more than double the number of housing units in…
Dooming a dam saves dollars
Dooming a dam saves dollars The operator of the Condit Dam in southeastern Washington recently concluded that what’s good for the salmon is also good for the company’s bottom line. On Sept. 22, it agreed to demolish the dam by 2006. In 1996, the federal government told dam operator PacifiCorp that a new license for…
An ancient ditch hits a glitch
For about a year, pollutants from a defunct gold mine have been leaking into the Rito Seco Creek near San Luis, a small farming community in southern Colorado. The creek feeds the San Luis People’s Ditch, the oldest irrigation ditch in the state, and many farmers fear their water supply is being destroyed. The Texas-based…
Recreation drives a forest
Colorado’s White River National Forest is a busy place. It hosts 11 ski areas – two-thirds of the state’s downhill skiing – and attracts about 8.4 million visitors a year (HCN, 12/7/98). Recreation use has boomed, with four-wheel drive devotees wanting more roads, and cross-country skiers hoping for more huts for winter use. Now, a…
A fresh breeze hits Western utilities
You can count on the wind in Wyomin’, beer when it’s foamin’, the road when it’s roamin’ … – Song by Rob McLaren and Spencer Bohren of the Gone Johnson Band MEDICINE BOW, Wyo. – Just south of this tiny hamlet stands the world’s largest windmill. Reaching almost 400 feet in the air when its…
A home-grown Water War
Note: two sidebar articles accompany this feature story: “Mayordoma works hard to go unnoticed” and “Acequia culture feels under the gun.” DIXON, N.M. – As Western water wars go, the five-year-long dispute between a “50s-style family ski resort in northern New Mexico and its rural downstream neighbors appears to lack the naked greed and slimy…
Mayordoma works hard to go unnoticed
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. DIXON, N.M. – On a thunderous afternoon in this unusually wet New Mexico summer, likely the world’s only flaming red-headed, Sicilian-Danish acequia mayordoma (that’s long for ditch boss) is quite literally in over her head. “This … eeeeyunk!… is the … augghgh! … hard…
Acequia culture feels under the gun
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Nicasio Romero lives in the village of El Ancon, Spanish for the elbow, or riverbend, about 30 miles from the Pecos River, between Santa Fe and Las Vegas. In 1986, he helped found the New Mexico Acequia Association. An artist and scholar, he has…
A tiny fish cracks New Mexico’s water establishment
Note: a sidebar article, “A water empire in the desert,” accompanies this feature story. ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sitting in his office on the outskirts of this sprawling desert city, Jeff Whitney remembers a poster that hung at an Arizona ranch where he worked as a teenager. A crotchety old cowboy smirked from the wall and…
A water empire in the desert
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. Albuquerque, N.M. — “I can talk,” says Subhis Shah. “But first, my wife says I need to take a coconut to the river.” The river is the Rio Grande, which flows through a bank of greenery not far from Shah’s downtown office.…
Imagine a River
Note: this front-page essay introduces this issue’s feature stories. For centuries, humans have come up with ingenious ways of putting the country’s second-longest river, the Rio Grande, to work. Pueblo Indians built brush dams that shunted water into fields of maize. Spanish farmers dug networks of dirt irrigation ditches, or acequias, that still sustain and…
Heard around the West
It began with an insult. Thirteen years ago in Boise, Idaho, radio announcer Paul Schneider defined a prairie dog as “a woman from Fairfield,” a rural town of 450. Instead of reacting with outrage, one woman resident of Fairfield decided to start an ugly contest, and “Mz. Prairie Dog” was born. Competitors lip-synching to songs…
Dear Friends
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A bittersweet victory in the New West
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – It is over. And, we have won. The Dry Lake ephemeral wetland and volcano crater outside Flagstaff, is safe from a golf course and million-dollar home development. The county supervisors close their thick notebooks. For a long instant, the big auditorium is silent. Then it is as though 200 people let out…
Another wilderness developer pops up
PARADISE VALLEY, Mont. – Chain saws are running in the middle of the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness. There’s a miniature backhoe there, too, along with a regular series of noisy helicopters, hauling in work crews. The man responsible is having a blast, like a kid with a new toy. All this would be illegal on public…
All our backs are a bit wet
RIO RICO, Ariz. – While driving to the supermarket, I spotted a border-crosser trudging north. He clearly was an illegal Mexican National. He looked weary, but I resisted an impulse to ask if he needed help. On my way home, I saw the man slumped alongside an unmarked Ford Taurus, nabbed by a plainclothes police…