One wonders how many signals the nation's leaders can ignore. The same goes for our Governor and Legislature. We read today that by August 16th or so the farmers in the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District will run out of water. The heat and drought now comes home to our valley. This photo was taken in July of 2005 from my brothers airplane. Cochiti Lake is in the foreground with Cochiti, Pena Blanca, Kewa (formerly Santo Domingo) and San Felipe stretching out behind.
Last night on the PBS news hour NASA scientists once again gave us an ominous warning. If you missed it
please watch it here.
And so I applaud the young high school student who was
profiled in the Albuquerque Journal this morning for suing the Governor and others for their lack of action on protecting her future. We need more kids like her.
2 comments:
One of the reasons the water shortages persist in NM is because property rights (i.e.water rights) are not respected by federal, state, and local agencies. There is too much "shortage sharing", neglect of priority dates, and underpricing of the resource itself. It is official policy of the MRGCD, EBID , and most acequias to share shortages when water is scarce.
Those who have sold water rights and reaped the benefit (i.e cash) and continue to irrigate are essentially using the resource that someone else is entitled to, and should placed at the back of the line or cut off when surface water is scarce. This an extremely complex and difficult system to manage here on the RG. We also evaporating vast quantities of water from the reservoirs, although that amount is diminishing as the quantity of water in those reservoirs continues to get smaller, in which case there won't be any water for anybody to use. Pray for rain. It will get ugly.
The Abq Journal editorial today, Aug. 10, said that the actions of this young lady against Gov. Martinez are disappointing.
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