"The Rio Grande is getting to the point where it's just like the Colorado
[River]," Gary Stolz, spokesman for the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge,
near McAllen, Texas, told the Austin Chronicle back in 2001. "It's all
used up." That was the year that the Rio Grande failed to reach the Gulf
of Mexico for the first time.
By the time the historic stream (which rises in the Rocky Mountains of southern
Colorado) has passed through the upstream impoundments and labyrinthine irrigation
ditches and reached the border with Mexico, at El Paso and Juarez, it has become
a channelized, concrete-bordered, bleak issue of dingy water. By the time it
passes through El Paso, Juarez and the communities just downstream, it often
flows as no more than an intermittent trickle of mineral-laden water. Until it
approaches the Big Bend National Park, its banks, once densely wooded with willows
and cottonwoods, have become lined with that invasive water hog, the tamarisk,
or salt cedar. From El Paso/Juarez to Big Bend, the Rio Grande is now often called
the "Forgotten River."
Even with its flow somewhat restored by downstream tributaries and throttled
by still more impoundments, "growing demand coupled with times of drought
is taking its toll," said Melissa McEver in her article "New Bill Would
Protect State's Environmental Flows," Valley Freedom
Newspapers, in 2001. "A
sandbar formed between the Rio Grande and the ocean—a shocking sight for
biologists and environmental advocates." Cindy Loeffler, Texas Parks & Wildlife,
told McEver that "It was a bad situation—it opened a lot of people's
eyes."
While aquifers and rivers decline in the desert basins, our increasingly
arid foothills and mountain slopes have become a setting for stressed and dying
trees and ferocious wildfires. The ranges have come to support abnormally dense
vegetation because of the governmental practice of suppressing not only human-caused,
but also natural, wildfires, which once cleared the forests of excess undergrowth.
Covered with the heavy stands of brush and failing trees, the slopes – dried
out year after year by earlier springs, longer and hotter summers, and later
autumns – now experience hotter, higher-reaching and faster-burning fires
that leave a forlorn landscape of unprecedented destruction.
As Kunzig said in his National Geographic article, close to 10 million acres
burned in 2006, setting a record that lasted but a single year. In southern California
alone, during the autumn of 2007, more than a dozen wildfires drove more than
a quarter of a million people from their homes. The wildfires destroyed numerous
structures, including the offices of DesertUSA and the home of Lynn Bremner,
DesertUSA's Sale/Marketing Director.
As our water resources across the Southwest decrease, becoming ever more
valuable (and perhaps ever more vulnerable), some are threatened with contamination,
which may render them unfit for use. Underground and surface waters are becoming
fouled with fertilizers and insecticides from irrigated fields and heavily watered
suburban lawns and gardens; leakage from septic tanks and aged petroleum products
storage tanks; manure from livestock feedlots and dairies; toxic waste from industrial
operations; heavy metals from mining operations; rubbish from landfills; the
flotsam and jetsam of human carelessness; and human waste from inadequate (or
non-existent) sewage handling systems.
For one example, the lower Colorado River basin has become contaminated with
low levels (about five parts per billion) of perchlorate, a constituent in Cold
War-era missile propellants. It originated, said the BNET Business Network Internet
site back in 2003, at a rocket fuel propellant factory in Nevada, near Lake Mead.
Over time, it could have adverse effects on human health, and it may take years
to flush out of the river system.
For another example, the upper Rio Grande basin, especially where it flows
through the Chihuahuan Desert downstream from El Paso and Juarez, has become
fouled. "On both sides of the border," said the Houston Advanced Research
Center in its Internet site, "many people live in substandard housing. Poor
water quality and lack of sewage and potable water, especially in Mexico and
the colonias in Texas, have been linked to gastrointestinal diseases…and
possibly birth defects…"
The Competition for Sustainable Water Supplies
"Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting over," someone – reputedly
Mark Twain – once said. From prehistoric times, Southwesterners have spent
a lot of treasure, spilled a lot of blood, and called on a lot of deities to
gain control of the waters of the desert.
Decades ago, when supplies were relatively abundant, populations were relatively
small, and droughts were expected to be of short duration, the Southwest's communities
and states and the U. S. and Mexico often entered into comparatively easygoing
agreements to manage and share water. Now, when supplies are diminishing and
sometimes contaminated, populations and demand are growing, and a possible long-term
drought may be unfolding, Southwesterners have intensified their competition
for sustainable water supplies.
From the Pacific Coast to the High Plains, commercial interests – from
small farmers to big developers to heavy industries – compete for water.
Communities – from major cities to rural villages to Indian reservations – compete
for water. The country club set, with lush gardens and lawns and verdant golf
courses, competes with impoverished neighborhoods for water. Environmentalists
compete with extravagant and careless consumers for the water required to sustain
riverine environments and deltas. The United States and Mexico compete for the
water required to meet the demands of their flourishing desert populations.
Meanwhile, federal, state and local government agencies, research centers,
citizens' organizations and Mexican institutions are struggling to define and
implement the coherent policies, management practices and technologies necessary
to assure sustainable water supplies.
Of course, these require coherent political leadership, organization, planning
and financial resources. Their work holds promise, but, clearly, as Jeneen Interlandi
said in "Rivers Running Dry," Newsweek, April 28, 2008, "There
is no single solution. Governments, industries and individuals will collaborate
or suffer the consequences."
"When the
well is dry," said Benjamin Franklin, "we learn the worth of water."
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