As I was reading a few weeks ago about the city of Scottsdale, AZ, cutting off the water supply to the upscale, unincorporated community of Rio Verde Foothills, one of the city’s “wildcat” subdivisions with a thousand some residents, the terrifying and befuddling crises that are the stock and trade of contemporary news became very real and personal indeed. Could such a thing happen to a community in New Mexico, to an Albuquerque subdivision, to a subdivision in Sandoval or Bernalillo County? Could my water be shut off? I found myself wondering where I’d go to find out.
It was slow to hit me, but I came to realize that the endless distractions of the daily media — the horror news as I call it — not only leave many of us politically paralyzed about the state of the world, they also discourage and disempower us so thoroughly we are unable to engage with local issues that we might, in some small way, actually help to solve.
As New Mexico poet and writer, Margaret Randall has written in her deeply insightful book of essays, “Luck,” to be released this October from New Village Press, “I have come to believe that the most effective long-range weapon politicians and the corporate world wield against us is distraction.”
Distraction is such a powerful weapon, that after nearly a quarter of a century into the worst drought in 1,200 years in the Southwest, easily accessible, reliable, up-to-date sources of information about the most valuable resource in any town, city, ranch or farm — water — cannot be easily found.
Distraction has us where it wants us — flummoxed, baffled, ill-informed. Is that what politicians and corporations really want? I believe Randall’s right. They do. They want us out of their hair. The news they produce keeps us at bay and so distracted we often look for other distractions to distract us even more.
How can citizens and water users do anything useful to protect their water supply if all they’re only being told are horrific tales about the shrinking of the Colorado River and Lake Powell and Lake Mead? That’s a big water story for sure. And the cutting off of water supplies in subdivisions is big, too. But what are we to do with that information? Where’s the rest of the story, as a famous pundit once asked? It’s locked away in government agencies that are keeping it to themselves, and warding off reporters and citizens with a labyrinth of acronyms, passwords and internet mazes within mazes, that keep us from digging deep behind the scenes.
Most of us know by now that drought has become the dominant climate trend in our region. We know that intermittent wet spells, while hugely helpful, won’t change the pattern of aridification anytime soon. What will happen to us when we suddenly find arcane local and national governmental agencies rationing our water, without any warning or preparation to speak of? We know something’s going to have to be done locally, sooner than later. We know we’re running out of water. But we can’t participate in the decision-making and water planning because we are being kept in the dark.
Could Albuquerqueans easily check with the EPA, the Department of Interior and its Bureau of Reclamation to find out about potential water rationing and remediation of contaminated ground water? Not unless they hired super geeks to do the job, and they’d probably get lost too. Could we rely upon the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA) to keep us informed? That seems like an obvious source. But has it informed us in the past? Only in the most cursory ways with self-congratulatory mailings and puffy propaganda.
Has the ABCWUA bothered to keep us informed on the clean-up of what is probably the largest and most dangerous jet fuel spill in the nation at Kirtland Airforce Base? No. We haven’t heard a word about that for years. And yet the spill must still be sitting underground and perilously close to the sweet spot of our aquifer. Have we heard anything about the Mixed Waste Landfill at Sandia Base and its radioactive debris threatening to our groundwater? We have not. How about all the other Superfund sites in our immediate region, and the twenty or so more still to be formally acknowledged? Has the ABCWUA, or the EPA for that matter, told us anything at all about them? Of course not.
Where’s the transparency?
The ABCWUA says it’s accountable to water users in our region. But it’s hard to see how it is. The water authority has no single constituency to be accountable to. The ABCWUA is governed by officials elected to other offices — our mayor, three city councilors, three county commissioners, and an ex-officio member. How are they accountable to the general electorate of water rate payers? They are not. They are only accountable to the voters in their districts. The mayor of Albuquerque, Tim Keller, who I’ve supported, has the largest constituency, but it doesn’t include the county. And we’ve heard precious little about water from City Hall, because water planning isn’t done by the city but by the arcane ABCWUA. It’s a classic shell game, and I think there’s a good chance it’s purposefully confusing to keep the general public ill-informed and malleable.
Is it possible that the ABCWUA is still projecting the fantasy that our region has all the water it needs to grow and flourish, not quite an underground Lake Superior as we were told in the past, but sufficient for the long haul? I wonder.
Would it be possible for us to go to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD) to get information about our region’s agricultural water supply? Not really. Even though many of us pay a part of our property taxes to support the MRGCD, and even though its governing board is directly elected, it remains one of the most opaque agencies in the state. How much water does it distribute to farmers? We know it must be a lot. But when you go to its various web sites and try to find the exact number of acre feet or gallons used, you’ll feel like a dog chasing your tail. It’s the same for Office of the State Engineer and the Interstate Stream Commission. Their websites seem like a token gesture. They’re so complicated and full of distracting jabber they’re almost useless unless you have immense amounts of time and professional internet savvy. It seems clear that the culture of water agencies does not include the political obligation nor the technical means of transparency.
We can, of course, turn to activist organizations like the New Mexico Conservation Voter’s Alliance (NMCVA) and the New Mexico Water Conservation Alliance (NMWCA). But they don’t seem to be set up to answer basic questions and the NMWCA, as it’s website says, “is composed of individuals from industry, commercial (sic), water providers and municipalities.” I’m not even sure what that means. We can consult on-line news outlets. Some of them are very environmentally sophisticated. NM PBS’s Our Land and its environmental producer and reporter Laura Paskus are an excellent source, one of the best in the country. Hanna Grover and her email NM Environment Review does exceptional work. Online news outlets like The Paper and Source New Mexico are very useful too. The Santa Fe New Mexican’s Scott Wyland is an astute environmental reporter. But the largest news outlet with the widest audience, the Albuquerque Journal, seems minimally interested in water on a steady basis.
What New Mexicans need is a formal, objective water information clearing house with regularly updated publications that makes local and statewide water issues and planning easily accessible to the general public. Why not spend what would amount to a tiny bit of the 12% windfall in the state’s $9.44 billion budget to hire some good website designers, reporters and editors to create a user-friendly Water Information Bureau to help us all to start doing our share to conserve water?
Despite the distractions that keep us holding our heads, we know for sure we are living in a time of intractable drought in a climate-altered world that’s heating up faster than anyone foresaw. Most of us want to help, but we need “government” to give us the information we need to motivate and maximize our best efforts. It’s all about transparency. But, unhappily, we have to wonder if weaponized distraction will always be at work to keep us from cutting through the smog.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
One of your best…
One of the reasons I do not spend that much time watching the news or reading alarmist stories is because it is a distraction. Both sides of the political aisle does it. We have become a culture dominated by fear. The fear of losing our water, the fear of migrants climbing over walls to spread drugs and disease, the fear of our history upsetting the far right’s “snowflake” children. It then becomes pretty much impossible to believe any information that comes from a government source as we no longer trust their reason for the dissemination of information.
V.B., well said. Without water there is no life. To date we have done little to plan for the future by informing the public about what they can and must do
to be part of the long-term solution. It isn’t hopeless but change must occur if we hope to remain part of the ecosystem in the Southwest. Thanks for your thoughtful reflections. Ray Powell, MS., DVM
I agree with other commenters that this posting is very insightful and important. Public demand is needed to address this lack of information to the public, but how will that be mobilized?
This Change in weather and in the case of my area although I am with in a mile walk to the Pacific ocean, is we can only water our plants twice a wk or get charge extra if we go over a certain amount of gallons of water per month. People often do not look with in to see what they can do in the case where water is stopped or reduced.
In Chilli they have fog catchers in the mountains that feed a city below. If you are in a desert and have a plasic bag a long, dig a hole and put a cup in the middle run the plastic across and put a stone in the middle and the sun will draw water from the sand. In Australia they put water containers under their driveways to catch water from the rain.
I collect water for the garden in an old septic tank and have many 32 gallon trash containers under the roof. This water can be boiled or/and filtered. This way I always have water on my property. Their are decorative water containers you can buy for sever hundred dollars. MIT came up with a device that pulls water from Air.
There was a woman who set her house up to be independent. She had water containers under ground, wind and solar for power. She was made to move because she did not get any permits to do this. I always wondered what influential person moved in. I live in a non-incorporated town. In a City you need to find out what the rules are so when they shut off your water, you will be prepared.
It seems so true we are being distracted to keep us disunited and inactive. Thank you for pointing out the difficulties in gathering information and thanks to the reply from outside nm for capturing water. I spent a day or 2 trying to speak to Los Lunas government officials about their plans to sell their water to Niagara water corporation, how shortsighted this is for all of us, especially since our aquifer ties us all together for water use. I got no response and I’m afraid to get back in touch with a Los Lunas activist organization (Water Watchers) for fear they were unsuccessful. Already FaceBook has taken much of Los Lunas water. The threat of small communities selling off their water rights can be fought if the many activist groups could get together more, more quickly and stop these sales. Kudos to the fighters for water for life. Joan Robins
It’s true that we need more accountability and transparency from our government officials but I think it goes beyond that to the public’s denial in the face of catastrophe. It’s a denial we all share–the realities of sustainability. And it’s just as serious as the denial of climate change. We don’t have the capacity to sustain people at the current level of consumption of resources especially water use. The water data is out there–agriculture consumes 77 percent of the water. Is that water being used efficiently and in the public’s best interest? The public’s denial of the crisis is fueled by a fear of questioning our water use and inability to negotiate a compromise. Everything needs to be questioned and people are afraid of that. We need to question not only our personal uses but the economic uses and including cultural uses.
I was fortunate enough to attend a zoom lecture last week on this presentation: https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/publications/monographs/bulletins/164/home.cfm
it hasn’t gotten much play in the media, but there is a LOT of useful info in here.