Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.
That’s the first sentence in Tolstoy’s famous novel, Anna Karenina.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
A similar truism could be proposed for local governments.
After writing about Pagosa Springs government boards and commissions for 20 years — my first Daily Post article appeared on December 4, 2004 — I can state with some certainty that all functional government boards are alike; each dysfunctional government board is dysfunctional in its own way.
I attended the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) board meeting yesterday evening, hoping to share with the volunteer board members some of the ideas I’ve written about in this editorial series, and also some that I’ve never written about.
Alas. The board was not interested in hearing my ideas. They preferred to dwell in their own dysfunction.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer board member on the PAWSD board of directors, but this editorial reflects only my own personal opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of the PAWSD board or staff.
Last month, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) board discussed several steps that could be taken to resolve the political impasse concerning the potential sale of the Running Iron Ranch and the future construction of a water reservoir.
- Discussion Regarding and Consideration of SJWCD Contract Rejections, SJWCD Tenure as Project Leader of Dry Gulch Reservoir Project, and Vote of No Confidence Regarding SJWCD as Project Leader
- Discussion Regarding and Consideration of Contract Negotiations Towards a Revised Dry Gulch Reservoir Project and SJWCD Participation
- Discussion Regarding and Consideration of a PAWSD Board Declaration to Actively Sell Running Iron Ranch
- Discussion Regarding and Consideration of Disclosure, by PAWSD and SJWCD, to Potential Funding Agencies of the PAWSD Board’s Intent to Sell Running Iron Ranch
It appeared, from this agenda, that the PAWSD board had lost all faith in SJWCD as a organization worthy of managing a reservoir project for the community.
But I didn’t want to give up hope, just yet. I wanted to give SJWCD a chance to become a functioning board. So I made a motion to table any action on these four items until our next PAWSD board meeting in mid-December. I suspected that the SJWCD board had not fully appreciated the offer from a private party who was proposing to help them to finally construct the Dry Gulch Reservoir — the reservoir SJWCD had been considering since 1989. I wanted SJWCD to have one more chance to consider that offer — after rejecting it on November 7 without even talking to the private party in question.
At last night’s December 2 board meeting, SJWCD once again unanimously voted to reject the offer… from the only party proposing to help them build a community reservoir.
After the meeting adjourned, one of the SJWCD board members handed me a recent article from Science Advances magazine, thinking I might enjoy reading it. The title:
Anthropogenic warming has ushered in an era of temperature-dominated droughts in the western United States.
The 11-page article was full of precipitation and temperature calculations from 1948-2022, and some interesting graphs.
Scientists who want us to worry about droughts and climate change rarely share scientific data about the Colorado River prior to 1948. Maybe as far back as 1900. But most climate change scientists seem to focus on the most recent 100 years.
Here, however, is a graph by Southwest Climate Change Network showing reconstructed river flows in the Colorado River from analysis of tree rings (blue & black), and historical record (red) for comparison. The red dotted line at 100% corresponds to 15 million acre-feet per year, the average flow of the river over the past 100 years.
Since 1800, the Colorado River has seen some of its lowest average flows and also some of its highest average flows. In 1984, the river delivered about 25 million acre-feet. In 2002, it delivered only 6 million acre-feet — about the same as 1934. The 1880s were especially dry.
The worst two drought periods were 850 AD – 900 AD and around 1150 AD.
But even during the worst periods of drought in the American West, the 25-year average of flows in the Colorado River rarely fell below 90% of normal. During the terrible droughts of the mid-1100s, the river flows still averaged around 85% of normal.
We have plenty of evidence that the American West is currently suffering from a “water shortage” in the Colorado River. Both of the nation’s largest reservoirs — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — are well below their maximum, and are near the point where they can no longer generate hydroelectricity.
But different people have different definitions of the word “shortage”.
A shortage could mean, “less than we need to maintain the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed.”
Or it might mean, “less than we need to survive.”
In the case of water in the American West, reservoirs are far below their maximum capacities mainly because agribusinesses are withdrawing irrigation water faster than Mother Nature is providing it. That water is often used to grow water-intensive crops like alfalfa, avocados, almonds and cotton.
According to a 1922 agreement, California, Arizona and Nevada agreed to divert no more than 7.5 million acre-feet of water annually from the Colorado River. But the Colorado Water Conservation Board estimates that the Lower Basin and Mexico actually used 9.4 million to 10 million acre-feet each year between 2019 and 2021, when the entire basin was in particularly intense years of drought.
Part of the issue, Colorado officials say, is that the Lower Basin does not account for losses due to evaporation and leaky infrastructure.
But the agribusiness interests in the Lower Basin claim that the Upper Basin — including Colorado — is failing to send enough water down the Colorado River.
Do we — The People — “need” alfalfa, avocados, almonds, and cotton grown in an arid desert? Of course not. The profits from these crops derive from lifestyle choices, not from necessity.
To farmers growing water-intensive crops — and to their lobbyists in Congress — the “water shortage” is extremely real.
To the rest of us, the “shortage” is, in a sense, imaginary. But that’s easy for me to say, as I add a splash of almond milk to my morning cereal, dressed in my cotton clothing.
Rather than change things that are easy to change — like our lifestyle choices and the way we use water — SJWCD wants Pagosa’s taxpaying public to believe that Archuleta County is in a dire situation that can be solved in only one way: a massive Dry Gulch Reservoir.
Read Part Seven, tomorrow…