Marita Prandoni has a passion for exploring different cultures and worldviews. She draws inspiration from her family, tutoring extraordinary youth, meeting unexpected heroes and from the stunning natural beauty of her home turf in and around Santa Fe, NM.
| Where Life Is a Ditch, Agua Es Vida |
| Thursday, 26 May 2011 | Marita Prandoni | Blog Entry |
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There are efforts in New Mexico to bring public awareness to our water shortage. Upon arrival at the Albuquerque airport, when using the restroom you’ll notice that water spits from the faucet in stingy squirts. Posted in almost every public restroom is a sign: “Saving Water is Always in Season.” As global warming aggravates a drying trend and desertification, water in our state cannot be taken for granted. In the movie Blue Gold: World Water Wars, a map shows the Rio Grande watershed as one of the most intense areas in the West for potential conflict over water. New Mexico’s Interstate Stream Commission oversees stream flow and groundwater distribution both in the state of New Mexico and beyond its borders. Our water rights are tied to eight interstate stream basins, and 76 percent of the water is allocated for agriculture. Surface water fluctuates according to mountain snowpack, which melts in the spring and recharges aquifers and rivers. The Rio Grande is not grand by most standards. In a bad snow year, if water compacts with Texas and Mexico cannot be met by the natural flow, reservoir levels upstream must be lowered, and a complex, trans-mountain diversion project through conduits and tunnels carries water over the Continental Divide and into the Rio Grande basin to deliver water to our cities. Northern New Mexico has centuries-old water-sharing traditions grounded in native cultures and Spanish colonization. Acequias are community irrigation ditches fed by tributaries from the mountains. Imagine them as a physical, fluid overlay of shared power in a democracy. Each acequia system has a mayordomo (manager) who orders the cleaning of acequias in the spring. He releases and rations water throughout the growing season, dividing it among the parciantes (property owners). The original neighborhoods of Santa Fe and Taos are not laid out in grids, but have narrow streets that curve organically along the ancient acequias. Spring in northern New Mexico signals the release of our lifeblood—snowmelt that courses through the veins of Sangre de Cristo drainages and down into our rivers and valleys. Water scarcity becomes apparent when huge swaths of piñon die off in drought years and endangered species such as the silvery minnow feature prominently in the news. If you visit the Desert Southwest, whenever you turn on the tap, think of the little silvery minnow struggling to swim in the shallows of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. This Earth Day and every day, wherever you are, be grateful for access to clean water. Don’t be an agua hogwa. Additional resources:
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Written by Coleen Morgan , April 21, 2009
I love this article, but not just because I happen to be one of the visiting relatives. Living here in the Pacific Northwest (where water seems abundant to most), I value our natural resources every bit as much as if I were living in the dry Southwest. Simply put... our parents chanted "Waste not, want not!" and the message "took" for some of the 10 kids. (There was an obvious need to conserve many things in the family!) Hooray for all who can urge family, friends and neighbors to conserve ALL precious natural resources! Happy Earth Day tomorrow... Shouldn't Earth Day be EVERY day?!
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It always amazes me when visitors to my home, some of them my own relatives, use water with wild abandon. Most of my guests are environmentally savvy, but their consciousness lapses when they open the tap. It doesn’t occur to them that pure water is a sacred resource, precious to life in the Southwest and increasingly limited around our aching planet. They use water lavishly, as though conservation were intended for someone else. 
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