In what Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, calls a “devastating blow to Idaho’s water sovereignty,” almost 3,000 claims to water rights upstream of Idaho wilderness areas were placed in doubt by an Oct. 1 ruling of the Idaho Supreme Court. The court ruled 3-2 that when the federal government established wilderness areas in Idaho, it also […]
Water
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
On the Missouri, the middle grounds gets soggy
Only a decade ago, animosity between states in the Missouri River’s upper and lower basins was out of control. If the states weren’t suing each other over Missouri River flows, they were attacking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for that agency’s management of the river system. South Dakota Gov. William Janklow grumbled that the […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
CAP could feed a new Arizona lake
Sonoran Desert dwellers between Tucson and Phoenix might one day be able to boat the Colorado River without leaving their backyards. Rural Pinal County says it wants to take a billion gallons of Colorado River water and pump it into a manmade lake. Thanks to the Central Arizona Project, the three-quarter mile, $7 million reservoir […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Water starts fires in Tucson election
TUCSON, Ariz. – Late one fall night in 1992, car dealer Bob Beaudry awoke to the sound of water gushing from a burst pipe. The water spilling into his basement, bedrooms and his front and back yards came from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project (CAP), a long-awaited, $4.7 billion concrete canal that […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
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 […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
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 […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
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 […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
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 […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
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 […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
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 […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
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. […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
A rare vote on water
For decades, water conservancy districts across the West have been shielded from the ballot box. Almost always, judges or governors appoint the board members, who have the power to levy taxes. This summer, for only the second time in 62 years, voters in Colorado had the chance to elect board members to a water district. […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 1999: Troubled Oasis
Troubled Oasis
Note: two sidebar articles accompany this feature story: “Speaking from experience” and “Agency cheerleader.” HAWTHORNE, Nev. – At sunset, Walker Lake glows from the floor of this desert valley, its silver-smooth surface reflecting the colors of the open Nevada sky. On the lake’s western shore, Mount Grant in the craggy Wassuk Range peaks at more […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
The river rules a hidden canyon
Day 2 “Then the sound of motors. “Baloney boats,” says John. We look upstream and see a huge silver-gray rubber raft come charging around the bend, bearing down on us. Swarming with people, it looks like a floating anthill. John pulls our dory aside to let it pass. Waves and shouts. At full throttle the […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
The river comes last
Deep in the Wyoming wilderness and high above tree line, glacial cirques collect and funnel pure alpine waters from Cloud Peak’s 13,000-foot summit down to the muddy torrent of the Bighorn River. Draining north into Montana, the river transects the Crow Indian reservation, where it is joined by the Little Bighorn, famous as the site […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Another plug to pull?
The Sierra Club has a new campaign: It wants to restore the valley John Muir called “Yosemite’s twin.” But California’s Hetch Hetchy Valley, once part of Yosemite National Park, is presently buried under 360,000 acre-feet of water. Resurrecting the valley would require draining the reservoir that the San Fransisco area taps for its primary water […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Strangling the Last Best River
Montana statesman Mike Mansfield, summing up the highlights of his career in the U.S. Senate, claimed to be most proud that he “had saved the Yellowstone River from the Corps of Engineers.” But while the Yellowstone is still the longest undammed river in the Lower 48, it is now a long way from “saved.” A […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
A history of how a grassroots rebellion won a water war
I made the mistake of reading Peter Carrels’ Uphill Against Water not long after I’d read David Remnick’s Lenin’s Tomb, his account of the fall of the Soviet Union, and at times had trouble remembering whether I was in South Dakota or in the old U.S.S.R. Of course, in South Dakota, political opponents were not […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Charting the course of the San Pedro
In the hot, dry grasslands of southeastern Arizona, the San Pedro River is an oasis. Unlike many other desert rivers, the shallow San Pedro is free-flowing, and its banks are soil – not concrete. Cottonwood and willow forests line the northward-flowing river, from its origins in Sonora, Mexico, to its confluence with the Gila River, […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Private dam planned on public land
A private company’s plans to dam a river on Wyoming’s Bighorn National Forest has not found many fans – even among government agencies. Sheridan-based Little Horn Energy Wyoming wants to build two reservoirs: a 140-acre impoundment on the Dry Fork of the Little Bighorn River, and a 73-acre pond on a ridge about 2,400 feet […]