Clouds and mountains.
Clouds and mountains were dancing this morning. I think they’re in love.
Clouds and Mountains
The alley behind Aldo Leopold’s house
The alley behind Aldo Leopold’s house. November 2024, by John Fleck
There’s an alley off Albuquerque’s Central Avenue, old Route 66, between the Southwest Capital Bank and St. John’s Thrift Store. You can’t go down the alley on Google Street View. Google Street View mostly doesn’t go down alleys. Alleys mostly don’t have names. You have to go there for yourself.
Down past the “Drug Free Zone: Purchase or Sale of Drugs in this Area is a Felony” sign, past the house with the backyard pond with the lovely sound of tinkling water, past rogue bamboo, past the shed with the big sign that reads “Bicyclist” above the door, you’ll get to Aldo Leopold’s house.
In her book How to do Nothing, a meditation on the attention economy (thanks R!), the writer and artist Jenny Odell talks about “the ability not just to withdraw attention, but to invest it somewhere else, to enlarge and proliferate it, to improve its acuity.”
I find alleys to be excellent tools in this pursuit.
Arroyo Mascaras
Arroyo Mascaras, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Decembeer 2023. By John Fleck
On the south bank of the Arroyo Mascaras in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a foot path that you get to by crossing a pedestrian bridge from the old De Vargas Mall.
L and I had rented a casita a few blocks to the south last winter, taking a break. I packed my foldable bicycle, and we both brought piles of books. We had no plans other than the suggestions offered by the things we had carried.
It snowed.
I found my way to the Arroyo Mascaras path by accident, entering what historian and photographer John Stilgoe calls a “secret corridor” – one strand of the web of paths, formal and informal, connecting parking lots and slipping through back alleys of a city.
The secret corridor proves an amazing fast shortcut to any explorer determined to brush aside low-hanging branches and to risk broken glass and rusted wire. And it offers the probing and poking explorer another view of the chrome-and-glitter commercial strip, even of the regional mall, for it makes clear the stealth with which change comes.
From the new path that opened before me, I could look back on the concrete wall bordering the arroyo, elegantly tagged by Santa Fe’s graffiti artists.
In 2013, the municipal government of Bogota, Colombia approved “responsible and artistic graffiti” in public spaces, and promoted state-sponsored murals. This prompted debates about the meaning of the art form, so rooted in a culture of oppositional place-making. It was the anthropologist Mary Douglas who defined “dirt” as “matter out of place.” This is foundational in understanding graffiti. Its meaning arises from the tension between those who think it doesn’t belong there, and those who think it does.
Stilgoe is a fan of secret corridors because you see stuff like this, and think stuff like this.
Alleys are great places to think about matter out of place.
The scrawling on the walls became more chaotic the deeper we moved into the tunnel. The unspoken rules that once governed canvas boundaries no longer apply; borders have collapsed, and pieces are free to exist in any patch of grey concrete their creators can find, or even on top of another artist’s work. It raises several questions: How can spatial freedom co-exist with respect for another person’s space? Is seniority alone a worthy basis for earning somebody’s respect?
That’s from Aaron Cantuu’s 2018 piece in the Santa Fe Reporter. Cantuu found his way to the Arroyo Mascaras too.
Aldo Leopold’s Albuquerque
When Aldo Leopold lived on 14th street in Albuquerque in the teens and 1920s, there was no alley there. Aldo’s house was the last one on what was then the edge of town, an alkali swamp extending from the Leopold back door to the Rio Grande three quarters of a mile away.
This is where Aldo was living as he developed his pioneering ideas about wilderness. This is also where Aldo was living when he helped create the institutions we needed to build levees to protect his home from flooding, and to drain the swamp. That swamp – today we would call it a wetland, or perhaps a wilderness? – is gone.
The old Leopold house has four steps up in front, built at a slight elevation to protect it from flooding. The next street over, the houses built later don’t have the steps up. No need. Drainage and flood control made it easier to build a city here.
Aldo Leopold’s Morning Commute
I like to imagine Aldo Leopold walking to work at the old Commercial Club building, past the Stern Apartments and Temple Albert, past the auto showroom and repair shop on Fifth Street, past the Post Office. In 1919, the Commercial Club building had a beauty parlor in one corner, and at one point was home to a library. If Aldo rode his bike to work (consider this speculative fiction), there was a bike shop across the street, a half block in the direction of the Alvarado Hotel.
The Alvarado Hotel is no more, replaced in the 21st century with an architectural facsimile that houses the city bus hub, which is how I got down there in the first place. I love to ride the bus for the same reason I love to walk: It is a perfect way to meet the world on its own terms.
Sergio Mendes and the Consumer Surplus of Music Streaming
Last’s night’s DJ John Show in the HF living room traced the history of Mas Que Nada, the ‘60s pop hit by Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66. Its roots in my pantheon of beloved music stem from its moment – KFI, the mid-1960s pop radio that ran as the background soundtrack of my childhood home. There was a bunch of Brazilian pop making the crossover to our hi-fi back then – Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Wave, Astrud Gilberto’s breathy Girl from Ipanema, though I’m pretty sure it was Herb Alpert’s Girl that I first heard. Alpert’s South of the Border was the handful of LP’s the Fleck family owned.
Mas Que Nada’s narrative arc traces back to the song “Nanã Imborô” by José Prates, recorded in the 1950s, which carries a whistled melodic line that evolved into the Mas Qe Nada, which the Brazilian pop star Jorge Ben wrote and recorded in 1963. But it was Mendes whose version slipped onto the Fleck family hi-fi thanks to the magic of pop music radio.
The consumer surplus of streaming music
In the place of the old Fleck family hi-fi console, a choice of a handful of records or whatever was on the radio, last night I could play DJ, reaching onto the Internet to sort out the story and then stringing together a five-song set of the song’s history, from José Prates through Jorge Ben to three Sergio Mendes versions – the 1960s, the ‘80s, and the version he did in 2006 with the Black-Eyed Peas.
The consumer surplus associated with music streaming here is stunning. In inflation-adjusted terms, the cost of that mid-60s Herb Alpert LP is equivalent to about two months’ worth of our family streaming music subscription. But the attempt at cost equivalence here defies the simple inflation adjustment. It’s not just that I get a lot more music. I get what amounts to any music I want, an endless trove of history and culture, curated however I choose. I loved being a radio DJ in my youth because of the big library at my disposal, but this so so much more.
I think I’ll play the whole Jorge Ben album next.
Tools for better environmental adaptation as we manage the Colorado River
I put up a slide for my University of New Mexico water resources graduate students during class yesterday afternoon with two pictures – the emerging canyons at the upper end of Lake Powell, and a smallmouth bass.
When Lake Powell gets low, we get a) the remarkable emergence of Cataract Canyon, and b) warm water invasive smallmouth bass sneaking through Glen Canyon Dam’s outlets, headed downstream to dine on the endangered humpback chub. My University of New Mexico colleagues and collaborators Benjamin Jones and Bob Berrens famously dubbed these “green-vs-green” tradeoffs:
The Anthropocene epoch is characterized by extensive interactions among natural systems and managed human systems and institutional arrangements. Complex coupled human and natural systems, such as river systems with managed flows intended to produce a mix of community, ecosystem, energy, water and recreational services, will necessarily implicate multiple dimensions of societal value….
Managing for one – keeping Lake Powell high to keep smallmouth bass out of the Grand Canyon – inevitably conflicts with the other – keeping Lake Powell low to protect the emerging environmental values of Cataract Canyon.
In a new white paper out today, my colleagues Jack Schmidt, Eric Kuhn, and I argue for the creation of a process to better incorporate and manage the multiplicity of values along the Cataract Canyon/Lake Powell/Glen
Canyon/Grand Canyon/Lake Mead stretch of the Colorado River as we develop new post-2026 river operating guidelines. We recognize that keeping water flowing to taps and headgates across the Colorado River Basin is the primary motivation behind the new operating guidelines being developed by the Bureau of Reclamation. We argue that, as the community is writing those rules, we have an opportunity to incorporate a broader set of community values.
In particular, we argue that more creative water accounting methods would allow water to be either held upstream in Lake Powell for later delivery, or send downstream early to Lake Mead, in order to better take into account what Benjamin and Bob called the “multiple dimensions of societal value.”
The white paper elaborates on our formal proposal submitted in March to Reclamation as part of the agency’s Post-2026 decision process.
Consumption and Waste of Water, circa 1895
Brackett, 1905
Public opinion has always favored the free use of water.
Brackett, Dexter. “Consumption and Waste of Water.” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 34, no. 2 (1895): 185-203.
In 1848, the designers of Boston’s water works assumed a need of 28 gallons per capita per day (GPCD). By 1872, while searching for and building the infrastructure to handle a new supply, they upped the number to 60 GPCD. By the mid-1890s, use had risen to 100 GPCD.
At the time of Brackett’s writing, there seems to have been no distinction between diversions and consumptive use.
(Note new blog category: “Value of Water.”)
Arizona’s 50,000 acre-feet of Upper Basin water has always been destined for tribal use
Eric Kuhn, Rin Tara, John Fleck
The pending Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement settles Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe claims to the Upper Colorado River Basin in Arizona. To do so, Arizona’s 50,000 AF entitlement of Upper Colorado River Basin water will be allocated.
Although Arizona’s testimony during the ratification of the 1948 Upper Colorado River Basin Compact indicated that Arizona’s cut would be used for tribes, Arizona fashioned the deal to benefit the Central Arizona Project. Charles A. Carson, Arizona’s Upper Basin Compact Commissioner, originally requested 136,200 AF/yr for Arizona in the negotiation but ultimately accepted 50,000 AF/yr in the interest of sweetening the deal for the rest of the states to sign on to stream depletion theory as the means for measuring system use. Stream depletion theory, under Arizona’s interpretation of the 1922 Colorado River Compact allowed Arizona to consume two million acre-feet per year on the Gila River system, while only being charged for one million acre-feet of compact apportionment.
This theory, in combination with the Upper Basin relationships strengthened by Carson’s choice to accept only 50,000 AF/yr, is what Carson envisioned would be used to convince Congress Arizona had a sufficient legal water supply for the Central Arizona Project. The CAP project was approved in 1968 and completed in the 1990s, though tribal water in Arizona’s northeast corner was not quantified. Even after CAP was built, a portion of the power generated at Navajo Generating Station, which consumed a significant portion of that 50,000 AF/yr apportion, powered the pumps that transported CAP water from Lake Havasu to central Arizona.
Eight decades after Arizona acknowledged that the 50,000 AF of Upper Colorado River Basin water was destined for tribes, Congress is on the cusp of approving the settlement that would resolve some water rights for Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe. This settlement is critical and long overdue, especially considering Arizona’s acknowledgement of tribal entitlement in the 1940s.
The “backstory” behind Arizona’s 50,000 acre-feet of Upper Basin water.
At the recent Water Education Foundation Colorado River meeting in Santa Fe, we heard an update on the status of Congressional approval of the water rights settlement among Arizona the Navajo, San Juan Southern Paiute and Hopi nations. Among other things, the settlement divides up the use of the 50,000 acre-feet of water apportioned to Arizona by the 1948 Upper Colorado River Basin compact. How Arizona ended up with 50,000 acre-feet of Upper Basin water is a fascinating story. At first blush, it may seem somewhat arbitrary, but the reality is that it was based on a well-conceived and executed strategy by Arizona’s negotiators At the time, the deal was cut, Arizona’s negotiator made clear that the only likely users of the water would be Native American communities in northeast Arizona. The deal was not designed for their benefit, but rather for the ultimate benefit of Arizona’s quest to build the Central Arizona Project.
While Arizona’s motives may have focused entirely on cutting an interstate deal to enable construction of the CAP, the state’s leadership were frank in acknowledging that the only people who might put Arizona’s Upper Basin allotment to use where Native Americans.
“There is not much possibility of using water on that land except … on the Navajo Reservation,” Arizona’s Charles A. Carson told members of Congress during the 1949 Upper Basin Compact hearings.
The 1922 Colorado River Compact divides the basin into two sub-basins: the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin. The dividing point is Lee Ferry, located in Northern Arizona, a mile downstream of the confluence of the Colorado and Paria Rivers. Lands that drain into the Colorado River above Lee Ferry are in the Upper Basin, including about 7,000 square miles of lands in northeastern Arizona. Today all but a small portion of these lands are located on the Navajo reservation. Likewise, both Utah and New Mexico have lands that drain into the river below Lee Ferry. The Upper Gila River in New Mexico and Kanab Creek and the Virgin River in Utah are Lower Basin streams.
Although Arizona has lands in the Upper Basin, it is not a State of the Upper Division, a critically important distinction under the 1922 Compact. As a state with Upper Basin lands, Arizona in entitled to use some portion of the beneficial consumptive use apportioned to the Upper Basin under Article III(a) of the 1922 Compact, but since it is not a State of the Upper Division, it does not share in the joint obligations of the Upper Division States to provide certain flows at Lee Ferry under Articles III(c) and III(d). This is a nuance the negotiators of the 1948 Upper Basin Compact understood from the get-go (UCRBCC Official Record, 1st meeting, pages 25-26).
Arizona’s Upper Basin Compact Commissioner was Charles A. Carson. He was the state’s special counsel for Colorado River matters. Carson, an accomplished lawyer and skilled negotiator, began representing Arizona in the mid-1930s. By the 1940s, Arizona’s top water priority was obtaining Congressional approval of the Central Arizona Project (CAP). Carson negotiated the 1944 contract between Arizona and the United States for 2.8 million acre-feet of Hoover Dam water. He orchestrated his state legislature’s ratification of the Colorado River Compact a few weeks later. In 1945 he chaired the legal sub-committee of the Six-State Committee that successfully lobbied for Senate ratification of the 1944 Water Treaty with Mexico. During this time, he became a close associate and friend of Colorado’s Clifford Stone and Royce Tipton. Stone was Colorado’s Upper Basin Compact Commissioner, its first Executive Director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and the long-time chair of the Committee of Fourteen that advised the U.S. State Department on the treaty negotiation with Mexico. Tipton was a consulting engineer that worked for Colorado on four major interstate compacts. He was an engineering consultant to the State Department during the negotiations of the 1944 Treaty. With Stone’s blessing, Carson hired Tipton to help with Arizona’s efforts to advance the Congressional approval of the CAP.
Carson’s appointment as Arizona’s Upper Basin Compact Commissioner was likely welcomed by the negotiating teams from the other states. He was designated as Chair of the Commission’s Legal Committee, which would ultimately make numerous recommendations to the Commission on the language and structure of the Upper Basin Compact. Among the many important recommendations the legal committee made were the decisions to include the water requirements of the Upper Basin’s tribes within the apportionments made to each individual state (rejecting an option by New Mexico to consider the tribal needs as a “sixth state”) and the language of Article IV which prescribes how the UCRC will determine the timing and amount and distribute among each Upper Division State a curtailment (aka – “compact call”), if necessary to be in compliance with 1922 Compact.
Carson first spelled out what Arizona wanted from an Upper Basin Compact during the second meeting of the Upper Basin Compact Commission in September 1946, almost two full years before the other four (?) states put their cards on the table during the marathon seventh meeting in July 1948. Carson suggested Arizona be apportioned “all of the waters (on its Upper Basin lands) precipitated thereto, and in addition thereto, 1000 acre-feet from the Paria River” (Official Record, 2nd meeting, page 4). When the other states were finally ready to negotiate the allocations (Colorado had insisted that the Commission not address this core issue until the Engineering Committee had completed its report), Carson reiterated his request–Arizona wanted the right to use all the water that fell on its lands as precipitation plus an additional thousand acre-feet from the Paria River. Now that the Engineering Committee had completed its report, this number was now quantified–136,200 acre-feet (Official Record, 7th Meeting, page 69). According to the Engineering Committee, these 136,200 acre-feet represented 0.87% of the natural (virgin) flow at Lee Ferry (Official Record, 7th Meeting, page 22). This number may seem very high based on our recent experience, but it was the number the Commission had in front of it and in the 1940s the estimated natural flow of the river at Lee Ferry was about 16 million acre-feet per year.
The problem facing the Commission was that collectively the states had requested a total of 117% of the available water. Since Arizona had requested a fixed amount, the problem was with the four Upper Division States, but that did not prevent the other states from suggesting that Arizona consider taking less. Wyoming’s legal advisor Bill Wehrli asked Carson if Arizona would accept an apportionment of 49,200 acre-feet. Carson responded, “I am willing to do that in order to try to help make a compact.” Interestingly, Wehrli responded, “we would be willing to be a little more generous and give you one percent” (7th meeting, page 109). The 49,200 acre-feet referenced by Wehrli was taken from the 1947 comprehensive basin report prepared by the Bureau of Reclamation. The report included very little detailed backup information. Although no tribal members were consulted or invited to the negotiations, the Office of Indian Affairs (now the BIA) provided some input to the Commission on tribal needs. It suggested that present and future depletions from tribal use on Arizona’s Upper Basin lands would total about 25,000 acre-feet per year but cautioned that this estimate was preliminary (Official Record, 5th Meeting, pages 49-51).
When the dust settled, Carson accepted a fixed 50,000 acre-feet per year, only 37% of Arizona’s contribution to the flow of the river at Lee Ferry. The only other state that accepted an apportionment smaller than its contribution was Colorado. It produces 70% of the river’s flow at Lee Ferry but accepted a 51.75% apportionment (~72% of its contribution). In contrast, New Mexico which contributes only 1.6% of the river’s flow, got an apportionment of 11.25%. What made Arizona happy was the package deal that accompanied the agreement on the state apportionments. The three other Upper Division States accepted a proposal by Colorado and Arizona that apportionments be measured by the stream depletion theory. Under the stream depletion theory, the Upper Basin’s compact apportionment is measured as the net impact of man-made depletions on the natural flow of the Colorado River at Lee Ferry. The agreement on the stream depletion theory was made a part of Article VI of the Upper Basin Compact. Article VI is applicable to the Upper Basin only, but Upper Basin officials, including Stone and Tipton, would later testify before Congressional committees that it was their opinion that the Lower Basin’s 1922 Compact apportionment was supposed to be measured as the net impact of the Lower Basin’s man-made depletions on the natural flow of the Colorado River at the international boundary with Mexico.
Why was adoption of the stream depletion theory an important victory for Arizona? Simply put, under Arizona’s interpretation of the 1922 Compact at the time, using the stream depletion theory, Arizona’s could consume two million acre-feet per year on the Gila River system, but only be charged for one million acre-feet of compact apportionment. In its natural state, the Gila River loses an average of one million acre-feet per year as it flows from the Phoenix area to its confluence with the Colorado River at Yuma. Under the stream depletion theory, the net impact of consuming two million acre-feet per year of Gila system on the natural flow of the Colorado River was only a million acre-feet. If Arizona was going to be limited under the 1922 Compact to the use of about 3.8 million acre-feet (2.8 million under its Boulder Canyon Project Act allocation plus all one million acre-feet of III(b) water (less a small amount set aside for Utah and New Mexico), using the stream depletion theory freed up a million acre-feet that the CAP could pump from Lake Havasu to Central Arizona.
California, of course, had a different theory on how 1922 Compact apportionments were supposed to be measured. It advocated for the “diversions minus return flows” theory. Under this theory, all two million acre-feet of Arizona’s Gila River use would be charged to Arizona as compact apportionment. Under this method, the water available for the CAP would be a million acre-feet less, likely making the project economically unfeasible. For more details on the different theories and why Colorado believed the stream depletion theory benefited the Upper Basin, see Science Be Dammed chapter 12.
During the negotiations of the Upper Basin Compact, Wyoming had initially opposed using the stream depletion theory. Speaking for its delegation, Wehrli questioned the basic legal assumption that the 1922 Compact apportioned depletions, noting that California’s legal argument had merit. He concluded that stream depletion theory benefited the Lower Basin more than the Upper Basin and he stated, “Wyoming is desirous of staying completely out of the controversy between Arizona and California, Lower Basin States” (Official Record, 7th Meeting, pages 58-60). To reach a final compact agreement, Wyoming ultimately accepted the stream depletion theory, but unlike Colorado, it never championed it in Congressional testimony or court filings. Note, with perfect hindsight, Wehrli was mostly right, but also note that the question of how to measure apportionments under the 1922 Compact has never been resolved.
What Carson accomplished by accepting a small apportionment was to strengthen the close working relationship between his state and the four States of the Upper Division. It’s apparent that Carson believed that this relationship would help Arizona in its battle with California over the Congressional authorization of the CAP. In his compact report to the Governor, Carson writes that his engineers and the Indian Service believed that Arizona would never use more than about 30,000 acre-feet per year on its Upper Basin lands and therefore Arizona received 50,000 acre-feet as a measure of safety. He makes no mention of any input or consultation with the Navajo Nation, nor does he refer to the 49,200 acre-feet estimate made by the Bureau of Reclamation. Concerning Article VI and the stream depletion theory he writes, “[t]his of course is in complete accord with Arizona’s construction of the Colorado River Compact, and it is believed will be helpful to Arizona in opposing California’s arguments on the Gila River.” Carson concluded his report with “I believe it to be fair, just, and equitable to all of the States, and particularly valuable to Arizona in that it supports Arizona’s position in opposition to the arguments made by certain California interests” (Carson’s report is included in the record of the 1949 Congressional Hearings on the Upper Basin Compact, pages 128-139).
After a minor kerfuffle with California’s Congressional delegation which was settled by report language making it clear that by approving the Upper Basin Compact, Congress was not committing the United States to any interpretation of the 1922 Compact, it was approved by Congress and became effective on April 6, 1949.
Was the Carson strategy to minimize its claims for Upper Basin water and enlist the Upper Division States as close allies in Arizona’s quest to build the CAP successful? The short answer is yes, the result was that the CAP was authorized in 1968 and has been fully operational for about three decades. The path that Arizona used to get there, however, differed from the one that he envisioned. Carson who died in 1951, believed that Arizona would use the stream depletion theory to convince Congress, or if that failed, the Supreme Court, that Arizona had a sufficient legal water supply under the 1922 Compact to build and operate the CAP. Indeed, in 1952 when Arizona filed suit against California, one of its claims for relief was that it asked the Supreme Court to find that the stream depletion theory was the proper method of measuring apportionments under the 1922 Compact.
In one of the first major turning points in the case, in 1954 California filed a joinder motion to bring the Upper Basin States into the case arguing that the compact issues that Arizona wanted the court to interpret such as how apportionments are measured, how the surplus is measured for Mexican Treaty purposes, and how mainstem reservoir evaporation is handled were basin wide issues that impacted all seven states. From today’s perspective, California’s logic seems obvious, but that was not the case in the 1950s. In a coordinated response, Arizona and the Upper Divisions States convinced Special Master George Haight that the case involved Lower Basin matters only. While the Upper Division States had independent reasons to stay out of the case, they were concerned that their participation in the case would delay Congressional approval of the Colorado River Storage Project, clearly had they decided that they needed to be in the case, the Special Master would most likely have let them in. Note, New Mexico and Utah were parties to the case as to their Lower Basin interests only.
Ultimately, Haight’s successor, Simon Rifkind determined that the 1922 Compact did not need to be interpreted to decide the case. Thus, the disputed compact issues raised by Arizona in 1952 remain unresolved. In 1963 the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act allocated 2.8 million acre-feet per year of mainstem water to Arizona, but subject to water availability under the 1922 Compact. This gave Arizona sufficient water to gain Congressional approval of the CAP. Had Arizona not followed Carson’s advice and chosen a more adversarial approach to dealing with the Upper Basin States, it is unclear if the CAP would exist today.
Arizona’s 50,000 acre-feet apportionment was also used to support the CAP because a portion of the power generated by the Navajo Generating Station was used to power the pumps used by the CAP to move water from Lake Havasu to central Arizona. At its peak the coal-fired plant consumed over 28,000 acre-feet per year. The plant was shut down in 2019. Today, the average use of Arizona’s Upper Basin apportionment is about 11,000 acre-feet per year (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Colorado River Basin Consumptive Uses and Losses Spreadsheet, 20240624 version. Note the consumptive use numbers on this spreadsheet are not necessarily the same as Arizona’s use under Article VI of the Upper Basin Compact).
Now nearly eight decades after the water needs of the Native Americans living in Arizona’s Upper Basin lands were subordinated to its interests in the authorization and construction of the CAP, Arizona, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the San Juan Southern Paiutes, the United States and others have reached a water rights settlement. The settlement divides Arizona’s 50,000 acre-feet of Upper Basin water into three ways: 44,700 acre-feet per year for the Navajo Nation, 2,300 acre-feet per year for the Hopi Tribe, and 3,000 acre-feet per year for the City of Page. Note, the settlement goes beyond just allocating Arizona’s Upper Basin water, it also addresses the Lower Basin Colorado River, groundwater, and the Little Colorado River (a Lower Basin stream).
We thus have finally reached the point where the water Carson told Congress was intended for use by Native Americans might actually be theirs to use.
At the Santa Fe meeting, there was general support and enthusiasm for Congressional approval (and funding) of the settlement. Tom Buschatzke, Director of AWDR missed the meeting because he was in Washington advocating support of legislation authorizing the settlement. The Salt River Project, IID, and CAP all support the settlement.
The settlement of tribal rights has always raised difficult issues for both basins. The rights of Navajo, Hopi, and Southern San Juan Paiute people to use the Colorado River for both consumptive and cultural purposes predate statehood of all four Upper Division States. Their rights are “pre-compact” rights and thus, under Article VIII, are not impaired by the 1922 Compact. The use of water by tribal sovereigns has never fit well into the state-centric water use rules established by the Euro-American settlers. When the Navajo Nation, a sovereign entity, signed its1868 Treaty with the United States, it was one community. Today, it is crisscrossed with boundary lines. It has land and water in three Upper Division States, in both the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basins, and in the Rio Grande as well.
Whatever the detailed issues are, it is now time to get past them and move the Basin toward unanimous support for approval and implementation of this important settlement.
Quoting Tocqueville
If each citizen did not learn, in proportion as he individually becomes more feeble and consequently more incapable of preserving his freedom single-handed, to combine with his fellow citizens for the purpose of defending it, it is clear that tyranny would unavoidably increase together with equality.
Alexis de Tocqueville, “Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life,” in Democracy in America
Jack’s Graph is Better Than Mine
Courtesy Jack Schmidt, Utah State University
This version of the Colorado River graph, courtesy of Jack Schmidt, more clearly illustrates the narrative of the talk I’m giving later this week:
- Early 20th century pluvial, when we built the institutions
- Mid-century baseline, when we built all the dams and farms and cities
- Millennium drought, when we emptied the reservoirs
From the Sands to Thriller
Sinatra, Basie, and Quincy Jones
I don’t remember how I stumbled onto Ernie Smith’s Tedium. All you need to know is that he wrote the definitive guide to why Butterfinger candy bars break so easily:
I’m always drawn to the structural integrity of candy bars. On the surface, they are often stacked, solid, as thick as a smartphone. (It must be the nougat.) But they break down easily, with only a minimum of outward pressure. Which is why it’s not a bad thing to put a smartphone in your pocket, but maybe not a Snickers.
One of the reasons I abandoned newspapering as soon as I saw a clear path was the stress – there was no silence. By this I do not mean the absence of sound – perhaps “silence” is not quite the right word – as the absence of freighted, weighty noise.
Smith had a piece this morning about the value writing about ideas that can “take up space… offer up points of conversation as alternatives to talking about the noise that constantly fills up our eardrums.”
If I had the writing chops, here’s where I’d go with this….
Your Moment of Zen
One of my favorite pop music tricks is a meandering misdirection in a song’s introduction, circling the main narrative before converging on it, the musical structure emerging slowly. Derek Trucks’ quiet wander into Midnight in Harlem on the band’s Everybody’s Talkin’ album is a current favorite. It makes me stop and listen. It drowns out the noise with a special quiet, commanding patience and attention.
The creaking door, the sinister footsteps, the wolf’s howl, before a ticking clock sets up the rhythm in Michael Jackson’s Thriller is canon here. I am riveted, peering from the first few bars into the song’s future, knowing what’s coming.
Sinatra at the Sands in 1966, the patter, the quiet Count Basie piano luring us into a drunk song.
Quincy Jones, amiright?
Sixteen years separate Sinatra at the Sands from Thriller, two of the towering works of American pop culture, both made possible by the towering talent of Quincy Jones, who died yesterday at the age of 91. I am listening to both this morning, and the musical structure Jones built to showcase the talent of both Jackson and Sinatra is a joy.
When I was a kid in L.A., learning how to write, I took repeated stabs at writing about pop culture and art, and I often wonder what might have happened if that path had more clearly opened up before me. I don’t regret the path I ended up on. It gave me a life of meaningful work. But it sure was noisy.
Look, I get that both Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson are troubling characters. If I had the writing chops, that would add a richness to the narrative, another layer beyond the noise. Or perhaps that is the noise? The story of Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones is deeply entwined with our nation’s troubled history of race. If I had the chops, I’d write about that, too. Maybe there is no way to avoid the noise.
For now, I’ll just play Thriller one more time before getting back to work.
The Colorado River Problem, In Brief
A shrinking river.
Putting together a slide deck for a talk next week, borrowing Brad Udall’s trick of a horizontal line for visualizing the mean during different time periods.