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Time to face the possibility of losing every drop from the Colorado River

Posted by: Maven on April 9, 2009 at 5:57 am

From the New Mexico Independent, this commentary:

When the New York Times did a major spread in late March on “Reinventing American Cities: The Time Is Now,” I tried to imagine what a reinvented city in the American West might look like if our decade-long drought extends another ten or twenty years.

What kind of a city would a severely water starved Albuquerque have to become to survive? People who think about cities always do so with ideal scenarios in mind. It’s not that they are usually spoken of, but they are there, improbable and pie-in-the-sky though they might be.

My ideal of the perfect Albuquerque comes from a mixture of images from the past and the future in which the city had definite edges, was a fertile agricultural paradise along the Rio Grande or the American Nile as it used to be called, had a strong downtown core, flourishing local neighborhoods and businesses, and no sprawl at all into the oceanic landscape around the city.

Add to that the image of Albuquerque as a college town and a research and technology hub for America to think its way into a sustainable future, and you have a garden city that is still a regional center and one that has maximized its potential as a think-tank city too.

But now I read in a recent edition of High Country News of the possibility of New Mexico finding itself with no water at all coming from the Colorado and its tributary the San Juan. And I wonder if my ideal will go the way of the boomer’s ideal of Albuquerque as L.A. on the Rio Grande.

That vision is dead as a doornail now. And mine could well be too. How does a city reinvent itself in a deep drought with its aquifer shrinking and the dream of drinkable river water snatched away like candy from a baby by the ogre of Western water wars?

Read more of this commentary from the New Mexico Independent by clicking here.

April 9, 2009 · Filed Under Colorado River & the Southwest

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