Gila River Dispute Tributary to Western Tradition

The Gila is the last undammed, free-flowing river in the Southwest

The rivers of the West are legendary. They drop steeply from the continent's highest mountains, spawning life and supporting industry and community. We fish on them, we boat on them and we sit beside them thinking about something else while they gurgle.

In the arid Interior West, these rivers are the only place that some western species can survive. They have become the point of contact, and conflict, between humans and nature. Some of the West's greatest battles have been fought over rivers and how they are managed. From the silvery minnow in Albuquerque to the salmon of the northwest, from dams on the Colorado to logging in the northern Rockies, westerners have fought about rivers and their future.

The battles aren't over.

In southwest New Mexico, the conflict erupts around management of the Gila. The last undammed, free-flowing river water in the Southwest is at stake. And the same old disagreements are coming to the surface: habitat or humanity? Fish or people? Economic growth or stagnation?

Stark choices. Can they be balanced, or are the differences so fundamental that they can't?

In 2004 water development advocates (including New Mexico's state engineer) secured the congressional promise of around $60 million if New Mexico decides to divert water from the Gila. Not necessarily a dam, but a withdrawal that would take off high water when available, and store it for later use. To water development advocates, this water would otherwise be wasted. It could support community water needs and attract growth and economic development.

Conservationists say a diversion is as bad as a dam. It removes water from the natural cycle that species are adapted to. Undiverted, this water would have continued to recharge downstream aquifers, wetlands and riparian zones supporting nature and recreation. Conservationists say leave the river alone. Buy up unused water rights and conserve water where it's being wasted instead.

The same kind of debate is happening up and down the Rockies. Montana and Wyoming have been arguing about the water quality impacts of oil and gas activity. Everyone who gets water from the Colorado is worried about reduced flows and the competition between habitat and humanity. Agriculture, using most of the West's water, is set up as a general opponent of species protection, fearing that taking care of creatures will cost the farmer needed water.

There's not much middle ground. There are many places in the West where balancing the different demands on our rivers would eliminate options for nature and the future.

The river debate isn't too different from how we talk about energy in the West. Should we lease and develop everything, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Otero Mesa, the Roan Plateau in Colorado, and the Outer Continental Shelf? Or should we leave some for the future, preserve some of what nature provided us, conserve our use of precious resources, and take the foot off the federal accelerator?

Last spring New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson vetoed legislative funding for a state project on the Gila to study the alternatives- except the no-development alternative.

It is nigh on heresy for a western governor to hold up water development funding demanded by the engineers and contractors. Call him a heretic.

Then last week Richardson announced that the Gila study group will be balanced and will consider all alternatives, including managing the river (without diversions) for habitat and recreation. It was welcome news for local conservationists in Silver City. It was also a welcome signal to the West that our politics don't have to be dominated by the use-it-now crowd.

Further, it was a measure of respect for a river whose legacy connects directly back to Aldo Leopold, a forest ranger in the Gila early in the 20th century and founder of the internationally significant American wilderness movement.

Not so happy: the state's water staff and local officials who want that water. A staffer at one of the agencies sent out an e-mail soon after Richardson's veto- don't worry, we are fighting hard, and we aren't going to change.

However tangled the Gila debate gets in a bureaucratic maze of agencies and funding and options and analyses, it comes down to a basic issue: how we respect our natural and historic legacy, and what we want to leave for future generations.

Ned Farquhar served as senior policy adviser to Gov. Bill Richardson. E-mail: inthewest@comcast.net

Copyright 2007 Albuquerque Journal - Reprinted with permission


 

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