OCR Text |
Show THE ZEPHYR/ APRIL-MAY ous housing eae edprojects a yet to be built, expecting P g and depending P g on on wa water from our valleys, While none of us here are likely to be called brilliant, we are not altogether stupid. The golf courses would have to be kept green, swimming pools filled, fountains flowing, and toilets and bidets flushing. Who could or would push the “off”button? In a recent Time magazine article, Patty Mulroy complained, “Exactly where do they expect us to go?” : great underground reservoirs are pumped out and the surface subsides losing its vegoe and reflecting back heat of the sun, our world will become ever drier and ever otter. There were several suggestions. One was to go somewhere below the deep carbonate aquifer. We may not understand fully the great mysteries of our planet and the complex ways Another was to move Las Vegas to New Orleans. Absurd, perhaps, but so, also, is the escalating desire for an ever increasing amount of water from one of the driest areas on _the planet. This is to support a complex that has no possibility of being sustainable. In a recent Time magazine article, Patty Mulroy complained, “Exactly where do they expect us to go?” There were several suggestions. One was to go somewhere below the deep carbonate aquifer. The “water grab” simply will not work. They simply cannot take the amount of water from these western valleys and maintain their historic integrity. Lower the water as little as fifty feet, and the springs and artesian wells and seeps will dry up. Pumping will become too expensive for farmers and ranchers. Wells will have to be drilled ever deeper or abandoned altogether making our homes and properties worthless. Who would purchase property with no permanent source of water in barren valleys with frequent, raging dust storms. “Without water, we'll croak.” Whoever said that, said a mouthful. When the greasewood and other vegetation dependent on the present available water begins to die, the desert soil becomes evermore unstable. Once the cover is removed, the winds, sometimes 50 to 70 miles per hours, will whip up the fine sands and clays of the valley floor. Dust storms reaching 3 to 5 thousand feet high will impact everything in its path. That includes the cities of the Wasatch Front as well as the Great Basin National Park, Fish Springs Wildlife Refuge, the Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range, and the proposed Deep Creek Wilderness Area. Is this the tragic story of California’s Owens Valley being repeated, a century later? Certainly, how many aquifers do we have to destroy to prove we can destroy an aquifer? Yet, this valley will die much quicker than Owens Valley for we have no lakes or rivers, nor nearly as much annual precipitation as Owens Valley had. If SNWA truly intends to keep its promise—to keep our valleys as they are, then they will not build the pipeline complex. It is a pipe dream. They cannot pump 24,000 acre ft. of water from this valley without immediate, devastating effects upon our way of life here and everything else in the valley. To build the pipeline is a futile, stupid waste of time and money. And as a consequence, we will see incredible destruction to the environment associated with it and without any justification for the needless disruption that will take place. The Indians of the southwest knew of the tremendous significance of water. Every journey had its beginning at a place with water and of necessity had to end at water. Every place that had water had its own name distinct from all others. There was Ibapah, meaning clay water, and Pahvant, meaning salt water. Pah or Pa, meaning water, was almost always part of the name. Pahranaget, Tonopah, Pahrump, and Pot-sum-pah (meaning fecal water), just to name a few, have become part of our lan- guage and geography descriptive of itself. It would, of course, be the same for every species of wildlife. Some, like the several small fish, toads, frogs, and many aquatic insects live totally dependent upon the surface water and the phreatophyte vegetation necessary for their sustenance. Birds are always a great pleasure to us. Some of them are here year around and some are just passing through-north in the spring and south in the fall. It would be easy to count 150 different kinds of birds here in Callao in a year’s time. Very few of them are ever found out on the desert. For most of them, Callao is a destination or a rest near our wet areas. Their need to feed The migrant birds would These wild creatures and the deficient water. They would Humans would be next. 2008 aquifers circulate ever so slowly through the crust of the earth being recharged by the precious precipitation. Then in time, they find an outlet to the surface creating verdant, wet areas. It is like water moving through a car radiator, cooling, then recirculating. When these and rest would be disturbed. be forced to find other routes alien to their historic habits. necessary wetlands would be the first to know the effects of be the first to be stressed-—-the first to have to move or die. it restores itself, but we must be able to recognize the serious threats we continue to im- pose on our Earth, before it is too late. Then, we will be forced to pay the Price and suffer What is the southwest to become? Huge, green metro areas with every luxury and amenity surrounded by dead and drying valleys whose only reason for being is to serve an insatiable thirst for a never-ending, hideous sprawl? PHOTO CREDIT: KUED consequences we cannot even imagine. It is said that intelligence has its certain limitations. Stupidity seems to abound infinitely. What is the southwest to become? Huge, green metro areas with every luxury and amenity surrounded by dead and drying valleys whose only reason for being is to serve an insatiable thirst for a never-ending, hideous sprawl? Can it ever be justified from any moral concept to allow a precious water resource to be taken by an entity steeped in glitter, glutton, gambling, and girls from a ranching and farming community whose concerns are children, cattle, country, and church? Should the sprawl of endless construction, gaudy hotels, and gaming houses be given priority over the lives and future of we who grow hay and are pastoralists? Sooner or later the citizens of the Southwest must decide. What will it be? Crops or craps? Cecil C. Garland Rafter Lazy C Ranch oe Low Income? Love Your Animals? Don't Want A LITTER - of Kittens or Puppies? FREE (or Discounted) YEAR ROUND SPAY/ NEUTER AVAILABLE The Solutions invite you to rethink, respect, reduce, reuse, and recycle, right here in Moab! For a Moab area recycling directory, and information on our hands-on projects, visit: www.moab-solutions.org or call 259-0910. For an application visit www.moabpets.org, or pick one up at Work Force Ser- Recycling conserves water, creates jobs, lowers pollution, protects pristine areas, and promotes personal responsibility. Recycling matters! vices, the Food Bank, Wabi Sabi, your local vet or the HSMV office at 76 South Main, #5. Call the Humane Society for more info. One wonders if SNWA et al really knows or understands the catastrophic consequences of their proposals...or do they care? Sooner or later, we as people who inhabit this small planet must face the fact that the great aquifers contained in the crust of the earth have an imperative purpose. These SHOCKING EVENT! After 14 months on the campaign Hillary's mouth locks OPEN Step out of the wilderness of Utah's state run liquor stores and take a break! Stock up at 2546 RIMROCK AVE SUITE 100 (across from the new Wal-Mart) GRAND JCT, COLORADO 970.257.1557 CROSSROADS where we are much more than a thirst driven hallucination on the desert. 259-4862 trail, me eeaat thing . Ol’ Hillary always increases my sales... ...8od love her!!! |