Cocoposts

Wells for What

Santa Fe New Mexican: 

Search for New Water Goes Deep

Sandoval County embarked on drilling deep wells in hopes of finding a solid 100-year water supply for Rio West, a proposed 12,000-acre development west of Rio Rancho that could provide housing and jobs. (...)

Read the whole thing but I'm gonna stop right there and question the undertaking.  Why develop a project that far away from existing jobs and housing?  Despite history and bare facts to the contrary, it is because speculative real estate investment is somehow assumed to be a good thing.  Land "development" consisting of nothing more than dividing it into smaller pieces and reselling it is taken for granted as being part of a process that has merit.  Real estate flipping is not economic development.  But as this has escaped the knowledge of the State Legislature for many years, it is perhaps understandable that Sandoval County should subsidize this water venture to the tune of $4.3 million.

(...)  The Rio West development needs an estimated 18,000 acre-feet of water for the 30,000 homes and industrial park envisioned, Springfield said. (One acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons or roughly the amount of water needed to cover one acre a foot deep.) One option was to buy surface water or groundwater rights within the upper aquifer and transfer those rights to the development's wells, an expensive proposition at $15,000 to $30,000 an acre-foot. 

The other option was to hunt for brackish, nonpotable water and treat it to drinking water standards. Springfield said, ``We determined that was the most cost-effective was treating brackish water.'' (sic) The cost of treating the water will be determined by the size of the treatment plant and the amount of water pumped annually, said Springfield, who did not give estimates.

As real estate kool aid you can barely taste the brackish water.   

Sticking it to the Mayor

The Albuquerque Journal covers the Mayor's staff involvement in City Council Campaigns.  I was drawn to the Barry Bitzer quotes about what he's drawn to. 

"Bitzer said he's drawn to campaigns in which the other side attacks Chávez.  "I tend to gravitate to campaigns that go out of their way to stick it to the mayor," Bitzer said.

Masterful phrasing but exactly who's been "sticking it to the Mayor"?   What a miraculous role-reversal this would represent.  If only it were true.

The story goes on listing evidence and systematic denials about the Mayor's staff working on campaigns.  His staff says he doesn't tell them to do it and they don't do it on city time or equipment.   Marty also issued a directive that there should be 28 hours in a day. 

You wonder how many of his staff are working for the candidates he doesn't support. 

In the closing sentence, the City Clerk remarks that polling locations have changed.  I got a mailing and letter indicating the new polling locations but not from the Clerk.  My precinct, big O'Malley supporters judging from yard signs, votes at a different location this election.  Never voted at that location before.

Things go black helicopter and I wonder if precinct consolidation and changed polling locations can't be engineered to suppress voter turn-out.   Confuse old people into not voting.   Is Barry Bitzer Albuquerque's Karl Rove?         
 

Chocolate Training

It seems some portion of time is spent doing things in life worth writing about.  But since you're busy doing them, there is no time to write about them.  Just thinking about the writing distracts from the doing.  It's like someone who is constantly taking photographs and disrupts the event for staging.  The moment becomes how to record the moment.  And when later writing about those now past events you become distracted by what you could be doing in the present.   

Instead of writing about walking dogs in beautiful weather I could be walking dogs in beautiful weather.   

I'm leaving for a week in a week and may (not), begin blogging in Italian.

Perugia.  Eurochocolate 2007.   I'm in chocolate training.  It's easier than learning Italian.   

Chevy Citation 80-85

I used to drive one of these to places like this.    No Lemon, that.  Vallecito.  Front wheel drive got us to some unlikely places. Note that the ad brags about 15'  length.  A large tarp slammed in the front doors and staked out from over the hatchback  made for a fine rain shelter on numerous camping occasions.

I don't name my cars but sis called her Shirley Chevy.    Thanks Michelle Suz for the Chevy memory.      

A Carolina Twang

I got a phone message from guess who - an Albuquerque City Council District 2 candidate - Katherine Martinez, also known as K-mart.  (But only affectionately and not because she reminds me of Martha Stewart or cheap crap from China.) 

She says we have a chance to "make a real positive change" in the upcoming election.  Then she talks about fighting a lot.   "I'm running because I believe it is more important to fight for our district rather than against individuals".    This means that she won't fight with the Mayor.  She won't fight with the Mayor for our district like Councilor O"Malley does now.   

And this is supposed to be a good thing how exactly?  It begs the question of whether she's picked out any others she will or won't fight.  We should know about them now too. 

Then she goes on about how she'll fight for public safety, roads and parks and a "sustainable environment for generations to come".   There's the sustainability buzz-word.  It's partly how she says it with that still-discernible little North South (?) Carolina twang  - a  twang that sets the conservative-alert meter blinking orange when she speaks.  Sustainability has come to mean anything and therefore nothing.  Witness the use of it here.  It is also mentioned in one of her mail pieces no less than 5 times.   

How exactly do you fight for sustainable environment?  Well, you undertake sustainable development - a far more common term.  Perhaps she doesn't understand the usage.   Perhaps she didn't want to mention "development".   Perhaps this is an intentional veering-away from the progressive meaning toward some developer-speak to divert responsibility away from the building industry.  That she works for.  Hello. 

OK, so now the conspiracy-alert meter is blinking.  But only yellow like the phone message light. 

From Wiki:

Sustainability can be defined as: "Humanity’s investment in a system of living, projected to be viable on an ongoing basis that provides quality of life for all individuals of sentient species and conserves natural ecosystems.”

That sounds like the developers' position on growth in New Mexico.   In my dreams.   

(Updated edits after posting - yes I need an editor.)

Developers Working Hard

The Tribune has an impressive story.  It's about  Albuquerque Public Schools  and housing on the west side.  The title is priceless:  School District and Housing Developers Work Hard to Keep Up with Growth. 

(...)  For years, West Side residents have criticized the school district for not keeping up with West Side growth, but that's changing.  After averaging about one new school a year for a number of years, the district plans to open a record six in 2009, Wijenje said.

(...) "For the first time, they are thinking and planning before the homes are built," said Laura Horton, president of the Ventana Ranch Homeowners Association.  "Everyone had to wait (for new schools) until now," she said.   The reasons the school system didn't keep up with growth were political and short-sighted, Horton said.

What 's changing?  How'd they get six schools going?  What political and short-sighted issues were  holding them back before?  Wait for it...

"Part of it was attitude: anti-growth.   (...) "The old regime at the district hampered the process," Lucero said.  The new leadership under Superintendent Beth Everitt and Brad Winter, executive director of facilities and planning, has welcomed support from developers and builders. They were also successful in getting a property-tax hike to help build new schools faster.  "We didn't have the will, or the money," Wijenje said of the past.

What was that last part again?  After the anti-growth attitude?  The part about the money?   There was something about money wedged in after we hear how supportive developers are.  Something about a gigantic property tax hike.  And didn't I hear about hundreds of millions in general obligation bonds and some State money too?   

Back to the  sympathetic developers.

Bob Murphy, the Ventana Ranch developer, was a leader in a new cooperative effort to build schools faster.  Murphy shared the Pearsons' pain in Ventana Ranch.  He tried and failed to get an agreement with the school district to build the Ventana Ranch elementary school by the time 500 homes were sold.  "I still don't understand why they waited," he said.  Murphy said the district bought the Ventana school site from him and sat on it while the neighborhood grew, with hundreds of children bused to Sierra Vista Elementary.

He shared their pain?  After selling APS the school site and reaping profits from the entire development?  After building profitable house after house after house.  While APS  just sat there.  Bad APS.

"We had a site," Pearson said, "but it was eight years before we got a school."  She blames the school district and so does her son Zach, 16.   "APS sucks. That's all I've got to say,"  (...)

Zach sounds like the Mayor. 

(...)  There's also a new model for paying for schools in the Albuquerque area.  Facility fees, about $3,000 per new house, are collected by the district before city building permits are issued. Started last year after an agreement with builders, the fees help offset school construction costs by 20 percent.

Actual costs for new school construction would be closer to $13,000 per new house.  Small wonder developers are cooperative.   

No mention is made of the battles at the State Legislature about school funding.   The Development Fees Act  of 1993 excluded schools from impact fees after successful lobbying by developers.   Twice, in 2003 and 2004, attempts to amend the act to fund schools were defeated by the Homebuilders Association and the NAIOP.  (Common Cause link)

But, according to this story, developers are wonderful and APS sucks. 

 

Big Dog Lake

Autumn Fog

War on the West Weird

Ed Quillan writes for the Denver Post - Politics West :  Doubting the "War on the West"

"Sometimes there are so many wars going on that it's hard to keep track of them all, especially when the wars have the same name, as with "War on the West." In recent years, that phrase has appeared in locutions like "Radical Islam's War on the West," where the West means Western Civilization in general. But before that, going back at least 30 years, the West that was allegedly under attack was the dry side of the 100th Meridian in the United States - our part of the world.

In that context, the phrase has appeared in some recent commentary about the citation of Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, for his behavior in a lavatory at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.  Some say he was soliciting a homosexual encounter, while others say the airport police were way too zealous. But the American Land Rights Association, based in Battle Ground, Wash., says that Craig's misadventures were actually just another salvo in the "War on the West."

As the ALRA explained in an e-mail to members: "By ambushing Senator Larry Craig, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport Police have effectively declared war on the West. They are primarily responsible for greatly weakening private property rights and Federal land use advocates in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and in Congress. We are urging you to make all your flight arrangements avoiding the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport for at least the next year and probably longer. We'll keep you posted as the boycott develops."

The more you think about this, the weirder it gets. Minneapolis is the site of the 2008 Republican National Convention, scheduled for Sept. 1-4, 2008 - that is, less than a year from now, and thus within the proposed time frame of the ALRA boycott. Any Republican delegate passing through the city airport, by ALRA logic, will be part of the War on the West. We Westerners will thus know who our enemies are, but I don't think that's what the ALRA had in mind.

Then you have to wonder about the airport police. To believe the ALRA spin here, you'd have to believe that an airport vice cop saw Sen. Craig, and thought, "I care about salmon and clean air and surface property rights, and this guy is against my position on all those things, so I'll frame him and embarrass him."

(...) 

No matter how you try to understand the ALRA explanation, it makes no sense. For that matter, neither does most of this War on the West rhetoric.

When Canadian natural-gas drillers poison water on our Western Slope, the War on the West crowd is silent. When yet another coal-fired power plant would spew out mercury into our Western skies, that's not a War on the West. When a rural subdivision is approved to raise our taxes and diminish our quality of life, the War on the West people do not rush to our defense. In other words, when there's an actual threat to our West, our defenders are nowhere to be found."

(...)

Parking Lot Blogging

Posting from the Steamworks parking lot in Bayfield near the northern encampment with a view to the high country. Had to come to town for orange juice for mimosas and a Denver Post for fire lighting.