Water Politics in the News

Looks like the U.S./Mexico border will have yet another use that will exclusively benefit this side of the line.

Arizona will invest nearly $30 million in a new reservoir at the end of the Colorado River, money that will buy the state more water and added insurance against future shortages.

The reservoir will be built about 20 miles west of Yuma, on the California side of the river, and will capture water that flows unused into Mexico. The structure was included in the seven-state drought plan adopted last month.

Nevada originally agreed to pay the full $172 million cost of the reservoir in return for access to more water but approached Arizona and California late last year about buying shares of the project.

linkage

Conservation gets a mention from Governor Napolitano yesterday in the State of the State Address

Population growth, combined with climate change and its resulting drought, will make water an ever-present factor in Arizona’s future. Through our laws, ordinances and building codes, we must continue to emphasize conservation, as well as preservation of riparian habitat, as we develop new water infrastructure for our state.

text of full speech

No word from the Governor on how the happy talk extends to the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Range; but at least responsible use of water is being reinforced. The signs are ominous for the future of the Rio Colorado

As of 2007, the Upper Basin is well ahead of its 10-year requirement, according to the Colorado Water Conservation Board. So, barring a historic dry-up of the river, a call probably won’t happen for at least 10 years.

That gives new projects more than a decade to start using water.

The long lag is like a broken speedometer that tells you the speed of your car five minutes ago. By the time you realize you’re going too fast, you might have blown through a speed trap.

“If we overdevelop the river, which seems to be the human condition — it’s happened on the Arkansas and other rivers — then we will have to pay the piper later,” Balcomb said.

linkage

Population growth is projected to grow exponentially

Southwest Colorado is home to about 90,000 people, with more arriving every week. And the regional population will grow almost 90 percent by 2035, according to the Office of the State Demographer.

A 2005 study called the Statewide Water Supply Initiative predicted that Southwest Colorado could meet most of its future demands, but unless it builds new water projects, some shortfalls are expected in every county except Dolores and San Juan.

La Plata County’s municipal demand is expected to grow nearly 70 percent by 2030, with an 800 acre-foot shortfall.

In the face of this growth, the region is trying to protect its history of farming and ranching.

linkage

 

Una Identidad Sin Fronteras: San Juan Bautista

[bumped up for the Feast Day – Man Eegee]

This weekend is the Pueblo Viejo’s annual fiesta to welcome the monsoon season. It’s a synergistic legacy that comes from the early days of the region’s history. In honor of San Juan Bautista, la gente will gather near downtown and celebrate the cultura that thrives in Baja Arizona.

Dates: Saturday, June 23, and Sunday, June 24, 2007
Time: 4:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. (both dates)
Place: West Congress St. at the Santa Cruz River (south side, west bank)

The traditional procession and blessing will take place on Sunday from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. People interested in walking in the procession are asked to meet at the Pima College Community Campus, 401 N. Bonita Ave., north of Congress St. The procession will follow along the Santa Cruz River to the fiesta stage where Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas will perform the blessing.

The Día de San Juan Fiesta features Escaramuza and Charros Flor de Primavera performing on horseback. Live music and dance groups include Navegantes, Mariachi Brillante Juvenil, Ballet Folklórico-Tanatzin, and Danza del Venado.

Más información at the City of Tucson website

Drawing from a post I wrote last year, here’s some history of this particular feast day.

I’m always fascinated by the way traditions evolve from a single point. In the case of El Día de San Juan on Saturday, the night before is celebrated across Spain with bonfires and rituals of cleansing and renewal; messages preached by Saint John at the waters of the River Jordan. The fires are kindled across cultures and borders to the shores of Ireland where the bonfires trace their roots to Celtic influence.

Perhaps it’s the hostile climate that I’m reacting to in 2007, but attending and supporting events like this seem all the more important. Any opportunity to celebrate one’s cultura should be taken advantage of; even if we have to create our own traditions based on the history of our roots.

In this particular case, I think of my dad who, like clockwork, goes to my hometown cemetery to de-weed and water the graves of our various ancestors every single Wednesday and Saturday. It is his way of communing with our past, as well as re-focusing his center so that he can be more present to the now and future. It comes from a deep place of respeto y orgullo – hopefully something that I will be able to continue when it’s my turn to take up his shovel and mangera.

Water is something sacred to people living in the southwest. I can hear padre’s voice echoing in my own throat on a regular basis that, “Man, we really need rain. The animals and desert are thirsty.” I guess it’s something we have our pulse on when a lot of our free time is spent outdoors – the place where we feel most at peace.

That lifeforce offered by the tierra y cielo is something that is worthy of celebration. If you’re in the Tucson area this weekend, join the fiesta along the (ironically) dry banks of the Santa Cruz and feel yourself be woven into the history that surrounds us.

Doing something like that is always worth it.

Part of the Una Identidad Sin Fronteras series

 

Arizona News Round-Up

Wow, where did the week go? It seems like only yesterday that we were hearing the voices of ghosts in Jerome tell their tales of mining history. So lets hope a quick flight to the Navajo Nation to see what’s going on in the Four Corners area. Ironically, internet woes.

The Navajo Nation has overpaid more than $650,000 in “questionable and improper payments” to OnSat, the Utah-based communications company that provides Internet services to the Navajo Nation, according to an audit released this week.

In addition, according to the audit, the tribe did not effectively manage its contract with OnSat as it was continuously revised upward, committing the tribe to pay ever-higher fees to bring the reservation into the Internet age.

Navajo Times

Hopefully things get resolved soon. We could use more voices in bloglandia from the Nation. Moving south now to Holbrook, the local politicos are making arrangements for some economic development

The agreements are both with Pacific-Holt Corporation, the company that is planning a large housing development in Perkins Valley and is hoping to purchase large amounts of property in the city.

One of those property purchases, the land known as the old Finley property on East Hermosa Drive, was approved by the council through a development agreement with Pacific-Holt. The sale of the city-owned property will bring in approximately $500,000, enough to make up for the $487,000 deficit in the 2006-07 budget, according to Economic Development Director A’kos Kovach. The sale is expected to close on June 29, just before the end of the fiscal year.

AzJournal.com

Just down the road in Silver Creek, a pitch was made by Taylor’s Town Manager to ask the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to come in and assist with flooding prevention.

Poczobut made a PowerPoint presentation that showed how over the past half century there have been a number of dams, hold ponds, irrigation diversions and levies built to capture and use runoff, and to control flooding. He noted that these, along with climate changes, have resulted in low flows within the Silver Creek and its tributaries, causing a deterioration of the ecosystem within the creek channel, which, in turn, compounds the potential for catastrophic flooding. Because the flushing flow has been eliminated due to Schoens Dam and the land use change, sedimentation has built up along the Silver Creek.

AzJournal.com

Do you feel the cool weather? That’s because we are trekking our way into the heart of the White Mountains (where I got that nasty sunburn earlier last weekend – it was so worth it though – at least I didn’t hit an elk) Wait. Huh?

According to DPS, Mike Wall, 49, of Dawson Creek, British Columbia, was driving his motorcycle east on U.S. 60 near milepost 327 around 9:15 a.m. when an elk wandered onto the road.

WMICentral

He’s gonna be alright. The elk? Not so much. Meanwhile an Eagle Scout in Springerville is using his artistic talents to brighten up a children’s interview room at the local police station (children’s interview room?)

Houston took a couple of weeks to find some Winnie the Pooh pictures he felt would be appropriate for the four walls. Houston drew a grid on the pictures that later helped him as he transferred the images to the walls of the room when he began his work on June 5. To make things as exact as possible, Houston gave copies of the pictures to a local paint store employee who was able to mix the paint colors exactly as in the pictures, right down to Pooh’s yellow body and bright red jacket.

WMICentral

There’s a cool pic of the mural at the link. Check it out. [waits for you to come back] Since we’re moving around this huge state at a rapid pace, make sure you take the necessary precautions against the blood-sucking vampires that invade the land (and I don’t mean snowbirds)

With the summer monsoon season just around the corner, area residents should take precautions against mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus.

People, birds and equine animals, such as horses, donkeys and mules, are susceptible to West Nile. According to the Arizona Department of Health Services, West Nile is transmitted to humans and animals through mosquito bites. Mosquitoes become infected when they feed on infected birds. The disease is not transmitted from person to person. No infected mosquitoes have been detected in Graham County so far this year, said Neil Karnes, director of the Graham County Health Department.

Eastern Arizona Courier

Alrighty then, that concludes this edition of our roundabout tour of the Grand Canyon State. What’s going on in your part of the world?

 

Arizona News Round-Up

Now that you’re done marking your calendars for Gila Bend’s Desert Scorpion Shrimp Festival, lets take another trip down the unbeaten path to see what’s going on in the Grand Canyon State.

Lake Havasu City – Mecca of Jet Skis, Boating, and…Rusty Buses

The double-decker bus in the English Village has hit the road.

Not that the bus could make it anywhere on its own. The bus was pulled Thursday from its base with a crane and then towed off the property through a donation by Steve Getter, owner of Steve’s Towing service.

Today’s News-Herald

I’m pretty sure that thing puts the Death in Death Ride. Anywho, heading up the highway towards Laughlin Kingman, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors grasp with the effects of Proposition 101 on rural areas.

The focus of Tuesday’s budget workshop for the Board of Supervisors seemed less about what the different county departments were asking for and more about what funds were being taken away from the county. The effects of Proposition 101 on the county’s coffers was repeatedly brought up by not only the Board but various department heads as well.

Proposition 101 was passed by voters in November. It limits the amount the county can increase the property tax rate to 2 percent each year plus new development.

Kingman Daily Miner

Heading east, the town of Williams is facing an emergency that will probably become an inevitability for the entire Southwest region – water woes

“We are finding ourselves, currently, in what I would term a water crisis. Williams has had water crises in the past,” said Wells. “This last winter created virtually no rainfall or snow of any amount and we are looking forward, as we always do, and we came to realize that, within a year, this town could be totally out of water. To compound things, our Dogtown I Well recently went down. The electric motor has burned out and we plan, at some point this summer, to replace the motor and get Dogtown I back up, so we currently only have one producing water well that is available for usage and our reservoirs are precariously low. June is the month of the year that tends to reduce the levels of our reservoirs rather dramatically. It is what I would term a crisis, because we know if the drought continues, and it is expected to continue, then within one year this community is out of water.”

Williams-Grand Canyon News

Continuing down I-40 to Flagstaff, the newest Democratic candidate for Congressional District 1 announced her bid.

Mary Kim Titla hopes to become the first Native American woman in Congress. She has announced her candidacy and plans to unseat Rick Renzi from Arizona’s Congressional District One.

Titla took her campaign race onto the winding woodland trail above Flagstaff’s Thorpe Park that has served as the route for the Native Americans for Community Action (NACA) Sacred Mountain Prayer Run for several years now.

Navajo Hopi Observer

Here is her campaign website to get more info on her candidacy. I recall her stint with Channel 12 in Phoenix, it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Dipping south now towards Camp Verde, some residents will finally reap the rewards of the town getting their crap together.

In 1993 an election was held in Camp Verde to annex a large tract of the town into the sanitary district.

The landowners that were taken in have been paying taxes just like everyone else in the district. Only they haven’t been hooked up to anything. In many instances they have had to pay additional fees to have their septic systems repeatedly pumped.

That is going to change.

On Wednesday, sanitary district Chairman Rob Witt took a trip to Phoenix to the offices of the district bond council Fred Rosenfeld. There he signed the paperwork that finalized the last $11 million needed to finish the expansion project.

Camp Verde Bugle

Speaking of sewage – two vigilantes in Prescott are facing charges for harassment

A Prescott Police investigation has revealed that two members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps had provoked the alleged attack by a man they photographed picking up the day labor at the corner of Lincoln and Grove avenues on May 18.

Lt. Ken Morley said that David Hunter and Bentley Bremmon could face misdemeanor harassment charges.

“They were harassing him to the point where Scott Blair got out of his truck and went after these two guys,” Morley said.

Prescott Daily Courier

And not really news, but definitely intriguing (at least to me), an excerpt from historical and creative writing out of the former mining hamlet of Jerome.

Lillie watched as the driver turned and started running down the rocky canyon road toward Jeome. She knew that he would probably run all the way to town. She wiped the handkerchief around her lace collar. It was hot. One of those spring days in Arizona that reminded you of just how hot it could be by the time summer came around. She knew that she should have waited for Jack to arrive from San Francisco, but she just couldn’t resist the idea of coming over the mountain in a stagecoach. She realized that soon there would be no more stagecoaches, and since it was only a day trip from Prescott to Jerome . . . well . . . She just hoped that the booming mining camp was all that it professed to be – the luxurious Hotel Montana, the spectacular view, the Opera House.

Lillie leaned her head out of the coach and surveyed her surroundings. They had just come down from the pass where they had been surrounded by pine woods and meadows. Then abruptly the terrain had changed. She was now in a small rocky canyon. Instead of pine forest, it was highland desert – red rock, manzanita, cactus, and desert flowers. Her eyes ran down the canyon to where it opened into the valley a couple of thousand feet below. She could see all the way across the valley to the massive red rock cliffs on the other side. Lazy white clouds drifted across the blue sky. The sun was growing hotter in the canyon.

Jerome Times

What’s going on in your part of the world?

 

Arizona News Round-Up

Here are some headlines around the Grand Canyon State.

Starting in Kingman, at the northwest corner of Arizona, the politics of water resources and development are on the mind of local politicos.

The provisions of the bill, as put forth in the Senate fact sheet, allow “county Board of Supervisors, by unanimous vote, to adopt an ordinance requiring a proposed subdivision located outside of an AMA (active management area) to demonstrate an adequate water supply before the final plat can be approved.”

Trekking down the Colorado River to the Yuma-San Luis area, funding has been secured for the infrastructure to build a new Port of Entry at the U.S./Mexico Border

The bonds will finance infrastructure projects such as cable conduits, lift stations and electrical, telephone and sewer lines for the port, known as San Luis II.

The new $42 million facility will be built by the federal government five miles east of San Luis, Ariz. While the project itself was funded in the last federal budget, Chessum said the GYPA needed to prepare the infrastructure before it could go forward.

“We agreed to give 80 acres to the federal government for the port of entry. It was agreed that it would be a construction-ready site,” Chessum said. “That means there have to be utilities there they can hook into.”

Moving to the middle of the state where it’s hotter than the face of the sun right now, Casa Grande residents are combating the problem of illegal garbage dumps in the desert.

Illegal dumping, desert dumping, wildcat dumping – they all mean the same thing: “a huge problem for rural Arizona,” said Rick Gibson, director of the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension in Pinal County. Gibson was speaking at an Illegal Dumping Seminar last week at Central Arizona College.

Dumpers think no one will notice the old tires, cars, TVs, appliances, computers, furniture, yard waste, household waste, dirty diapers and toxic chemicals left in the desert, he said.

But a rancher notices when his $6,000 bull swallows a plastic bag and dies, said rancher Gerardo “Gerry” Gonzalez.

Speaking of environmental disasters, the Globe Silver Belt is highlighting efforts to clean up the copper tailings from various area mines – using cattle.

Patterned after a holistic land management system developed by Rhodesian ecologist, Allan Savory, the process takes the land through a life cycle. The whole eco-system is considered, and grazing cattle on the land is an important part of the cycle.

Heading north, over the Roosevelt Dam, to Payson we’re met with preparations for una fiesta grande that will happen this fall.

As Payson’s 125th anniversary celebration draws near, organizers are adding more features to make the occasion a memorable one.

New developments include a time capsule to be opened on the 200th anniversary, a golf tournament, a historic quilt display and performances by a miniature horse drill team.

The celebration begins on Tuesday, Oct. 2, and spans six days of activities designed to honor the town’s wild Western heritage.

And last, but certainly not least on the dust-devil trek through AZ, the Arizona Range News reminds valley residents around Willcox that Tuesday is National Hunger Awareness Day.

Food in Arizona is abundant and affordable for most of us, thanks to the work of productive farmers and ranchers. The Arizona Farm Bureau encourages individuals and communities across the state to donate to their local food bank in honor of National Hunger Awareness Day on June 5th.

[Editorial Blurb] I’m thinking about making this a weekly post – drawing from different town papers across the state. Whatdoyathinkaboutthat?