Water in the West: Challenge for the Next Century has received a lot of press, including a lengthy description in this paper (HCN, 6/22/98). Much less attention has been paid to the 22 background studies that go with the central report. Not only is the price right (free), but it is almost guaranteed that, whatever […]
Water
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Saving the Platte
On one of the most spoken-for rivers in the West, environmentalists, irrigators and state and federal governments thread their way through a tenuous agreement
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
From river to river
Note: This front-page editor’s note is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. From river to river around the West, details vary, but the bigger picture is the same: The federal government brandishes the stick of the Endangered Species Act because it’s almost the only tool the government has to restore river ecosystems. Yet in […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Adopt a stream
Driving the West’s highways, you can’t help but notice the blue “Adopt a Highway” signs announcing who’s agreed to pick up trash beside the road. Now, the Colorado Water Conservation Board has started a similar program to help monitor stream flows. The agency is responsible for maintaining adequate water levels in 1,300 of the most […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
‘Mr. Dominy, are you a hero or a villain?’
Floyd E. Dominy doesn’t seem to hear the question from a college student right away. “Floyd Elgin Dominy, larger than life,” as Marc Reisner called him in Cadillac Desert. Maybe the former commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is listening instead to the hum of the nearby turbines. Maybe the shine of his eyes […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
A water baron takes on the establishment
One-word descriptions of rancher Gary Boyce are easy to find in the high, wide and impoverished San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado. “Greedy” comes up often, as does “opportunist,” along with terms unprintable even by Starr Report standards. But “flamboyant” also fits. Boyce is generous with expensive cigars and wears knee-high hand-tooled stove-pipe cowboy boots […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
As mayordomo
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. As mayordomo you become the pump, the heart that moves the vital fluid down the artery to the little plots of land of each of the cells, the parciantes. Water relationships would be simple and linear were they not complicated by all those other […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
A tangled web of watersheds
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Rio Costilla represents only a tiny part of the overall Rio Grande system, which crosses state and international boundaries, trickles through dams, and loses volume through countless diversions during its 2,000-mile long journey. The Costilla Creek Compact distinguishes the Rio Costilla, but the […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
A river becomes a raw nerve
Along the Rio Costilla, communities have been fighting over water for more than a century. The latest round may be the most heated.
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
I am mayordomo
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. I am mayordomo of a very small irrigation ditch. My position would be a curiosity to most people I take pleasure in conversing with in the city and would be to them probably of little more importance than the identity of the plant emerging […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Next to blood relationships
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Next to blood relationships, which rule the valley, come water relationships. The arteries of ditches and bloodlines cut across each other in patterns of astounding complexity. Some families own properties on two or three of the valley’s nine ditches. You can argue that the […]
Posted inAugust 3, 1998: Tribes reclaim stolen lands
Western Slope wins water wrestle
Water users on Colorado’s Western Slope are celebrating a court decision that keeps the “river” in the Gunnison River Basin. A district water-court judge ruled that there was not enough excess water in the Gunnison River watershed for the Union Park project, a proposal that would have diverted 60,000 acre-feet of water per year to […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Should a highway run through it?
Utah residents are not sure they can live with Gov. Michael Leavitt’s legacy. In 1995, Leavitt proposed a 120-mile “Legacy Highway,” running along the booming Wasatch Front (HCN, 3/16/98). The four-lane highway would help shuttle commuters through the Salt Lake valley, and run right along the shore of the Great Salt Lake. The proposal sparked […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Western water: Why it’s dirty and in short supply
Note: in two sidebar articles that accompany this feature story, rancher Patrick O’Toole and chair of the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission Denise Fort share their views in their own words. First, you notice the coyotes. Then shadows swirl near shore – a group of razorback suckers, an endangered species, moving in to spawn. […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
This report could destroy irrigated agriculture
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Patrick O’Toole raises cattle, sheep and hay near the Wyoming-Colorado border. He serves on the Wyoming Open Space Committee, the Colorado River Coordinating Council and is a director of the Family Farm Alliance. The lone agricultural member of the Western Water Policy Review Advisory […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
We wanted to democratize Western water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Denise Fort, a faculty member at the University of New Mexico’s School of Law, chairs the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission. She is a former director of New Mexico’s Environmental Improvement Division and is a member of the National Research Council’s Water, Science […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Locals stand behind an aging dam
For years, irrigators who benefit from the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River in southern Oregon have resisted removal of the salmon-blocking structure. In the past, when the district’s board members agreed to removal, local voters removed those members. Now, irrigators have won another reprieve from federal and state pressure, thanks to a court […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
In the Sonoran Desert, a lesson already learned
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Twenty years ago, cattle roamed the open range near here, and the only sound during the night, besides coyotes, was a car bumping over a cattleguard on north Scottsdale Road. The metal strips hummed like a stroked guitar in the stillness of a desert night. Now the cattleguard is gone, and the […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Water in rivers is OK
Water can remain in New Mexican rivers and still be “beneficial,” says state Attorney General Tom Udall. Up until his decision last month, water rights could be lost unless water was diverted from a stream, and thereby put to beneficial use. Udall’s ruling opens the door to marketing water rights for environmental protection, which also […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Nobody gives a damn about this dam
The Army has abandoned a small reservoir in Red Butte Canyon east of Salt Lake City, Utah, leaving federal, state and county agencies playing a game of political hot potato. Red Butte Reservoir is one of several refuges established in northern Utah to protect the June sucker – a fish native to Utah Lake, south […]