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 […]
Water
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 […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
A research resource to drown in
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 […]
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
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 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 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
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 […]