The Monday Links on Tuesday

[Monday (or, in this case, Tuesday) is "Links Day" with links gathered over the past week to online "stuff" to read and sites to surf that impact us directly or offer information about our regional issues. Please feel free to send me links to any conservation, environmental, simple living, city planning, energy and water, etc. stories that you have come across online.]

Water issues (always at the top of the list):

The Rio Grande:

Mighty Rio Grande Now a Trickle Under Siege

A glimmer of good water supply news for New Mexico’s middle Rio Grande farmers


California's and the West's water woes:

Nestlé’s despicable water-crisis profiteering: How it’s making a killing — while California is dying of thirst

Drought Spurs Protest Over 'Unconscionable' Bottled Water Business

Petition to Nestlé: "Stop taking water from drought stricken California"

Another Petition: Tell the U.S. Forest Service: Stop Nestlé’s Illegal Water Extraction

As water runs dry, Californians brace for a new way of life


You'll see more of this in Texas (and everywhere):

Hays County Water Fight Tumbles Into Committee

County to buy land for groundwater



Fracking:

The Facts on Fracking

Fracking is causing Oklahoma’s earthquake “swarm”



The Power of the Energy Industry:

Teaming Up with the Fossil Fuel Industry NPR’s Gas Pains

The Monday Links (and Updates): Water, Green Infrastructure, the Commons and a Laugh

"This is part of a long, wide arroyo running through the new Desert Springs subdivision in far West El Paso. Some areas have concrete, as shown here, but rocks and wire were used to line much of the arroyo to lessen erosion. The aim is for it to return to its natural state with natural plants and soil. Rock walls and iron fences enclose the arroyo. (VICTOR CALZADA — EL PASO TIMES)"

[Monday is "Links Day" with links gathered over the past week to online "stuff" to read and sites to surf that impact us directly or offer information about our regional issues. Please feel free to send me links to any conservation, environmental, simple living, city planning, energy and water, etc. stories that you have come across online.

New on the bottom: Story Updates - updates to stories that we have posted about.]


Water Issues:

Water Loss: An Invisible Global Crisis

West's snowpack improves, still not great

Rio Grande forcast improves, but that's not saying much

Measuring Groundwater in Texas


Green infrastructure:

More Benefits of Green vs. Gray Stormwater Infrastructure


Climate Change:

Climate Change Impacts in the United States: Highlights


The Commons:

The Commons as a Source of Renewal

How Much is the Commons Worth?


Tar Sands:

The Nightmarish Normalcy of Canada's Tar Sands Mines


Story Updates:

$25 million for Stormwater Drainage (You will recall the urgent need by the Mayor and Rep. Niland to take 3 year's worth of open space funds for stormwater improvements. Well . . . seems there was other money all along for the projects thanks to the PSB.)


Arroyo featured in Desert View's biggest El Paso subdivision (Actually, this story should be under the category of "laugh of the month". The picture accompanying the story is above. Do you see a "wide arroyo" OR concrete? Truth is that the developer destroyed the mountain to river arroyo by severely narrowing it and concreting the sides. Rather than building a bridge ("too expensive"), he put in a box culvert. Never mind Mule Deer wanting to get to the river or even hikers wanting to follow the arroyo.)

The Monday Links: Colorado Snow Pack, Smart Building, Gluten and Trees

[Monday is "Links Day" with links gathered over the past week to online "stuff" to read and sites to surf that impact us directly or offer information about our regional issues. Please feel free to send me links to any conservation, environmental, simple living, city planning, energy and water, etc. stories that you have come across online.] 


John Fleck's Blog (Definitely bookmark and read.) 2 recent entries:

Bad January, worse February in Colorado, Rio Grande basins (If you only have time to read one of his posts or even one of these links, this is the one to read.)
"half-told stories about the value of water"
Water in the desert, Fountain Hills edition


Megadroughts:

California, Here Dry Come!


Energy Efficient Architecture and Building:

Aggressively Passive Maine Dorm


Off the subject but interesting:

The Real Problem with Bread (It's Probably Not Gluten)


Visit, bookmark and surf these sites:

franklinmountains.org
Open Tree Map

What's Really Drying up the River

Fred Pearce's "Cry me a river" was first published by the Guardian on February 26, 2006.  You can read it as published online. The article is an edited abstract from his book, When the Rivers Run Dry. 

Juárez Valley Farmers Come to Blows over Water

El Diario reports on April 16 that farmers in the Valley of Juárez have come to blows over irrigation water.   The farmers claim that the water agency, Conagua, is not delivering water equitably.  Individual farmers are creating blockages in the irrigation canals and using sand bags to direct more water to their fields, and  In any case the supply of water this year will be severely limited.  The director of the regional water office says that due to the delay in delivery of water from the US, he can only supply treated water (purple water) to the farmers, and that only at one-half the amount needed for irrigation.   Well water has become too salty for agriculture.

On Sunday, April 21, El Diario noted that the northwestern segment of Chihuahua would likely lose 4 million pesos of productivity this year, as farmers decide not to even try to plant crops such as wheat.   More than 2,000 hectares are likely to be left unplanted.

Thanks and a hat tip to Marshall Carter-Tripp for this report.

Sharing Rio Grande Water: A Mexican Perspective

Map from PROJECT FORMODERNIZATION AND TECHNICAL IMPROVEMENTS TO THE CONCHOS RIVER IRRIGATIONDISTRICTS

In Learn Your Water Footprint I alluded to the growing anger of Texas farmers and the Agriculture Commissioner over the IBWC's release of more water to Mexico while holding up the release of Rio Grande water to Texas.

Thanks to Marshall Carter-Tripp, below is a translation of a story that appeared in the El Diario on May 3, 2012. Marshall wrote me in an email: "We all need to understand that Mexico also has obligations and is being forced to deliver water to the Rio Grande despite the severe drought in Chihuahua State. This news appeared in the El Diario . . . but not in the Times!"

Carter-Tripp summarizes the article as "[j]ust a story about the Governor of Chihuahua's anger when he found that the 1944 treaty with the U.S. on water sharing requires Mexico to send water northward regardless of drought.   A mirror image of the folks in Texas complaining about sending water to Mexico."

Even with the drought that afflicts the region, Mexico will continue with the delivery of water to the US in conformity with the International Treaty on Water of 1944, the Mexican section of the IBWC (CILA in Spanish).  This was explained after the governor of Chihuahua, César Duarte Jáquez, recently asserted that “no way” was water going to be delivered to the  US authorities.  “I want to say with all gentlemanliness and diplomacy that there is no water,” he affirmed a few days ago in comments to the press.  Consulted about this, Jesús Luévano, Mexican Secretary of the IBWC, indicated that the delivery from this country [Mexico] is generated from six streams, one of which is the Rio Conchos, which is in the state [of Chihuahua], but if it has no water it will be supplied from other tributaries.  That is to say, from the rivers San Diego, San Rodrigo, the Escondido and the Salado, along with the Las Vacas arroyo [stream] located between Coahuila and Tamaulipas.  The functionary said that from the courses of these tributaries water flows all year to the river, from which is taken one-third for the US and two-thirds for Mexico.  “It is impossible that nothing comes from the Rio Conchos, there is always water coming from the Conchos to the Bravo [Rio Grande],” he noted.  The Chihuahuan governor claimed the water of the state, after it turned out that up to now the US would only guarantee the allocation promised to Mexico annually under another treaty, that of 1906, used to irrigate the fields in the Valley of Juárez.  Under this 112-year-old treaty, the neighboring country [i.e, the US] should provide an annual quota of 74 million cubic meters of water, coming from the Elephant Butte and Caballo dams located in New Mexico.  But this year, due to the drought conditions up to this moment, the allocation set aside for this year, which commenced 5 April, only equaled 20 percent of the annual quota that the US is committed to provide.  The bi-national body announced that it would review the conditions in the dams every month in order to determine the final delivery, which according to its estimates might reach 25 million cubic meters, “but this would depend on the evolution of the conditions in the river basin.”  Given this, Duarte said: “We need the cubic meters that the North Americans should deliver to us here and must expound our drought condition in a stronger manner.”  In the Rio Grande there is no resource whatsoever, and they [the US] keep in suspense the Valley of Juárez, the agricultural zone of the City of Juárez, he added in his remarks to the press.  Luévano indicated that there have been conversations with Duarte Jáquez and they have explained to him how the 1944 treaty works.  He mentioned that up to now the Rio Conchos has lacked important portions of the quota delivered to the neighboring country (the US), excluding the floods of 2008.  The official explained that the obligation of Mexico is to provide 431.7 million cubic meters every year, but accounted for in five-year cycles, which means that this year the delivery could be zero and the next year double, that is 863 cubic meters, and this would be fine.

El Diario also has a translation application at the top of the story. (Link above)

Scarps

Regarding the Rio Grande Rift, Dr. Phil Goodell emailed: “Yes, the Rio Grande Rift is widening, east to west, maybe 1mm/year, or less. Buy some land and watch it grow! And buy earthquake insurance.”

If you take tomorrow morning’s hike from Hondo Pass to Smuggler’s Gap, you might want to take the time to drive from Hondo Pass south on Magnetic/Alabama Street. Although urbanization hides much of the natural landscaping, you will notice as you pass Zion Lane going south or Stoney Hill Drive going north, places where the hillsides have just dropped off. These are scarps – evidence of more ancient faulting as the Rift rifted and the Franklins grew. You are driving along the Eastern Boundary Fault Zone.

You will see a water tank sitting atop a scarp, the result and evidence of a fault. The “dirt” is the Fort Hancock sediment of just a few million years ago deposited as the ancient Rio Grande (and other mountain streams) filled a vast lake geologists have called Lake Cabeza de Vaca. Movement along the fault resulted in the stair-stepping of the sediments and, when the Rio Grande finally broke south and drained into the Gulf of Mexico about a million years ago, the scarps were exposed revealing the fault lines. Further erosion defines these steep slopes for us today all along I-10 on the west, the bluffs by El Paso High School and along Mesa and Alabama.

Horses, camels, mastodons, giant sloths and other mammals lived along Cabeza de Vaca and their fossilized bones can still be found today.

By the way, as Cabeza de Vaca formed and gave a home for ancient animals 3.6 million years ago or so here in a place where we now live, Australopithecines appeared on the other side of the world and then the first Homo species whose descendants, a couple of million years later, would look up at the top of a rift and marvel at the beauty of the Franklins.

Save the Cottonwoods

Here's a time sensitive message from Kevin Bixby at the Southwest Environmental Center.

Immediate action needed to save cottonwoods near Las Cruces

The NM Department of Transportation is on a mission to cut down trees along I-10 in Las Cruces. Please help us stop them.

Since April, NMDOT has cut down about 45 of the native trees growing along the highway just east of the Rio Grande, some of them maybe 50 years or older. Now, it has announced its intention to remove the remaining dozen or so trees, despite previous assurances that it wouldn't.

Why? Good question. It's hard to get a straight answer out of NMDOT.

At first, the reason given was for safety. Apparently the trees were in a required "clear" zone that would allow vehicles leaving the roadway to recover. (Never mind that these trees are at the base of a steep embankment and any cars going off the roadway at that point would have greater worries than hitting a tree.) Later the department admitted the trees were outside the clear zone, and that the presence of a guardrail made it a moot point anyway, but said that the homeless people camped under the trees posed a hazard. When we proposed that they remove the underbrush (mostly nonnative salt cedar) and leave the trees as an alternative solution, they agreed.

Now the department has changed its mind, apparently because the neighboring farmer has complained that the cottonwoods ON PUBLIC LAND are "stealing" his water and fertilizer and shading his pecan trees. (See article in today's LC Sun-News.) SWEC respects water rights, but this is taking the concept too far. The cottonwoods are on publicly owned land. If anything, the pecans are benefiting just as much or more from the rainwater running off the interstate on to his property. Not to mention that some of the cottonwoods probably were there before his pecans were planted.

They are an integral part of the bosque ecosystem, and they provide many benefits to people and wildlife. SWEC has been working hard to get MORE cottonwoods along the river and in the floodplain. NMDOT should be protecting them, not cutting them down, especially when it lacks a compelling transportation-related reason to do so.

Please take a moment to call or email these NMDOT officials TODAY. If they hear from enough people, they will be forced to reconsider.

Ask them to:

• Immediately cease cutting down any more cottonwoods along I-10 near the Rio Grande.
• Plant at least 45 new native trees to replace the ones already removed, in approximately the same location.

Here are the officials and their contact info:

• Gary Girón, Secretary, NMDOT: Gary.Giron@state.nm.us; (505) 827-5110
• Frank Guzman, NMDOT District Engineer: frank.guzman@state.nm.us; (575) 494-0363
• John Hummer, NM Transportation Commissioner: john@steinborn.com; (575) 496-7272

Thank you for taking action. If possible, please let me know at kevin@wildmesquite.org that you contacted them.

Read the Las Cruces Sun-Times story. Historically, in the El Paso area cottonwoods were chopped down in the 1930s to straighten the river. (The wood was used for fuel for the machines re-channeling the Rio Grande.)