Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

 No Long-Term Plans Have Been Made to Keep the Southwest Supplied With
Water

http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/591435nm09-03-07.htm
Monday, September 3, 2007
Albuquerque  Journal-->By John Fleck
Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer

    We live in the fastest growing part of the country. It is also the
driest. We don't seem to be doing a very good job of linking those two
issues, according to experts gathered for a two-day symposium on water and
growth.
    "We don't adequately combine planning for growth and planning for
water," said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland,
Calif.
    "The people responsible for making the decisions about building new
homes are typically not the people who make decisions about water," Gleick
said.
    Gleick was one of the keynote speakers at the gathering, sponsored by
Southwest Hydrology, a water magazine based at the University of Arizona.
    The conference carried a provocative title: "Sustainable Water,
Unlimited Growth, Quality of Life— Can We Have It All?"
    The consensus answer from a range of experts from New Mexico, Arizona
and California was a resounding "no."
    "We can't have it all," said Kris Mayes, a member of the Arizona
Corporation Commission.
    The modern West was built on a foundation of government policies at the
federal, state and local level that amount to a growth engine, according to
Grady Gammage, a Phoenix land-use lawyer and Arizona State University
faculty member.
    Government water policy— a long tradition of dam building and
groundwater pumping— is a central part of that foundation, according to
Gammage.
    "The assumption has always been, in the western United States, 'If you
build it, they will come. And we'll find the water,' '' Gleick said.
    Gammage said, "This is all about luring people to come here."
    The problem comes as that tradition, deeply embedded in our culture and
institutions, collides with the realities of water shortfalls in the arid
West. Gammage likened the situation now to that of the Hohokam, the ancient
native people who lived and farmed in what is now Phoenix but who were gone
by the time European settlers arrived.
    "I think we are bumping up against going the way of the Hohokam,"
Gammage said.
    The problem, the experts said, is not a lack of water.
    Rather, it is a lack of enough water to do all of the things we say we
want to do and a lack of societal and institutional will to confront the
problem.

N.M.'s problem
    New Mexico's water planning illustrates the dilemma.
    In 1987, the state launched a water planning effort at the regional
level. Local officials in each of 16 areas of the state were called on to
draw up a plan for their own long-term water future.
    They estimated how much they expected their populations to grow, how
much water they have now and how they use it, and how they expected their
water uses to change in the future.
    One key finding, repeated throughout the state: New Mexico's water
supplies are taxed to the limit by current uses. But in each part of the
state, people expect their populations to grow, driving up residential and
business water use, according to an analysis by Amy Lewis, an independent
consulting hydrologist based in Santa Fe.
    The most commonly cited option for meeting those needs is to shift
water to cities from agriculture, which is the largest water user in the
state. In the Rio Grande Basin, for example, agriculture uses 57 percent of
the water consumed by people, according to the latest data from the New
Mexico Office of the State Engineer.
    But the water plans, taken together, expect agriculture in New Mexico
to grow, Lewis found.
    "All the water planning regions, without exception, want agriculture,"
she said.
    That sets the stage for conflict, she said. Communities want
agriculture and they want growth, but there is not enough water to do both.
    Lewis and others also noted another problem with the system: New Mexico
state law has no requirement linking local land-use planning decisions with
regional water plans.

Every last drop
    We are not without options.
    For starters, we can use a lot less water in our homes.
    Changes in our washing machines, toilets and showerheads still offer
substantial savings throughout the West, said Bill DeOreo, president of
Boulder, Colo.-based Aquacraft.
    Desalination— pumping brackish groundwater and cleaning it for
municipal use— was another widely discussed option.
    Sandoval County and Alamogordo are both looking seriously at that
approach.
    Cleaning up sewage so it can be reused— either for irrigation or in
some cases as drinking water— was also a widely discussed option.
    But desalination and sewage treatment consume significant amounts of
energy. And increasing our energy supplies, whether for water treatment or
to meet the needs of population growth, requires water for power plant
cooling and other purposes, noted Sandia National Laboratories researcher
Mike Hightower.
    That water-energy problem exists all over the United States, Hightower
said.
    "This is not a Western problem," he said. "It's a national problem."
    Making the situation worse, climate change caused by greenhouse gases
appears likely to decrease our rainfall, making droughts worse, said
Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona's Institute for the Study of
Planet Earth. More than any other part of the United States, climate change
is likely to place limits on society in the West, he said.
    "The part of the country that is experiencing the most rapid population
growth is also the part of the country that's likely to see the most
limiting climate change," Overpeck said.