Cocoposts

Tesla's Waterline

Sean Olson in the Albuquerque Journal describes the fate of the taxpayer funded waterline that was to have served the new Tesla flying electric carpet plant.  Now that Tesla isn't coming, you'd think there wouldn't be a line.  Wrongo. 

See, the water line is more important to local fortunes than Tesla.  Just like the public infrastructure extended to the westside Eclipse site, that they will never occupy, was more important than Eclipse.   

Land values - its about the land values. 

Sean gets through the whole story without mentioning the elephant and the 800 pound gorilla in the room.  Dancing.    A lot of people in this little burg have their nut in speculative real estate and at least one of them is a County Commissioner (Hint: the one that drives a Bentley and owns the Tesla site).  I guess because he doesn't happen to sit on the Authority board right now, this doesn't need mentioning.  Except it really does need mentioning.

The leaders assure us that it is all a good thing.  Other companies will come along and policies will protect us from the sprawl development that will want to hook into the line.  Like that's worked before. 

I think they expect us not to notice we've been had. 

That means there will be no service to homes in a SunCal development beyond those zones until growth on the West Side catches up to or reaches the SunCal development.  Businesses, on the other hand, would have immediate access to the water if SunCal builds the water and sewer lines ....

What happens if neither one occurs? 

Oh, don't be so doomy gloomy!

Batting for Builders

From the Albuquerque Journal is a headline that nearly says it all:  Rules Upset Builders.   

The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority enacted water use restrictions that will cost money.   The Home Builders are sure this means their money.    

Albuquerque City Councilor Don Harris has drafted a resolution calling for the council to oppose the water authority's decision. Harris' resolution contends that jurisdiction for laying out new building requirements lies with the city and county. "This is an unprincipled power grab," Harris said Wednesday.

And we know unprincipled power grabs when we see 'em. 

The maneuver to create the water authority was a power grab.  A calculated attempt to create the perfect sprawl tool, it was separated from those pesky planning powers of municipalities and counties.  Now it's turning around to bite at itself - or its handlers, resulting in attempts to amend away the water conservation teeth the Authority grew in response to common sense and public demand. 

But not builder demand.  So let the whining begin. 

Katherine Martinez with the Home Builders Association complained that no one asked the builders to write the legislation - like they get to do with so many other regulations.   Builders would like the requirements to be rescinded and then reworked with comment from the building community - I'll bet.  Maybe with some laudatory speech thrown in about "building" our great city and a little bowing and scraping from those who should be ashamed of regulating without  Home builder approval.   

By Golly, they didn't want to be told where to build and they don''t want to be told how to build  - especially outside of the well-lobbied confines of the state construction industry division.   

They'll be as green as they want to be and not a shade greener.

Watered Down Planning

The Journal opines:  Water Board Should Keep Focus on— Water

In the high desert, water is at the center of any discussion of urban growth. The city and county have a unified approach to water-resource planning, under the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority.

On the contrary, it is a fragmented approach to have three separate governments doing the work of one.  It fragments  planning, oversight and public participation. 

City Councilor Michael Cadigan would like to see the Water Authority take on a much larger role. Cadigan, currently a member of the water board, proposes that the board look at all growth issues.  ...

This would be a radically different agenda for the Water Authority, which was created by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Bill Richardson at the county's behest and over the city's vehement objections. In fact, it is the agenda you normally find at meetings of the city and county planning boards, or at the City Council and County Commission. (sic)

Wuh?  Re-read about a dozen times and still makes no sense.

As it relates to issues other than water, development and the rules that govern it are the business of those governing bodies. The water board was not created to make social policy.  The full City Council and County Commission are responsible for urban growth decisions, and are held accountable by voters. A board whose membership is appointed, not elected, to deal with water issues should not second-guess governments explicitly authorized to make planning decisions.

Wait, wait, wait.  Can't have it both ways.  Can't tout unified water resources planning  and then sniff at  urban growth decisions as  "social policy."  Water planning without social policy is simply engineering.   

The fact that water is key does not make the Water Authority king.

I beg to differ. 

Auntie Growth

Joe Monahan suggests that the rift at City Council, in which half of them boycotted last night's meeting,  had to do with seats on the water board.  He said conservatives "fear the authority has turned into an anti-growth mechanism." 

I wish.  But the ABCWUA (lovely acronym) has been heartily approving water service and negotiating developer agreements for line extensions - like service to Westland's  Upper Petroglyphs area.   The entire purpose for creating the board in the first place was to get water to the westside unfettered by contrary policies or politicians.   

:Auntie Growth is on vacation.: 

Nevada Empress on PBS

I turn on the TV last night and there's Patricia Mulroy, The Water Empress. Only the News Hour with Jim Lehrer calls her the Water Czar.  The first, more accurate title, was bestowed by High Country News in 2001.  It is more in keeping with her vampiric ageless stature.

Nevada is a bell weather for New Mexico and they have lots in common.   We have written and thought much about Nevada's  socio-political construct. 

Mulroy got her own little segment in the show and didn't have to answer silly questions on the panel about whether growth was good or bad.   She even got to bash planning in a sentence they used as her opening. 

PAT MULROY:  From a planning perspective, we're assuming the worst.   

I hear disgust in her voice - like she's saying she always assumes the worst from planning. But I'm touchy, I know.

RAY SUAREZ: Pat Mulroy is called the water czar of Las Vegas.

Empress!  She's the Water Empress!  I yell at the TV jumping around trying not to spill the cab.  Big dog sighs.

She describes why farming and ranching must die.  And how its a natural thing.   She's saving Vegas from drought, afterall.   She looks like  a tough cookie.  If I were drought, I wouldn't want to mess with her.

(...)  PAT MULROY: We have to protect this community from that drought, and there's only one way to do it, and that's develop a water supply that is hydrologically separate and apart and not connected in any way to the Colorado River.

So that project is not driven by growth; that project is being driven by what we see the consequences of climate change are on the Colorado River Basin.

RAY SUAREZ: Mulroy argues Las Vegas actually uses only about 10 percent of the state's water, compared to nearly 80 percent consumed by ranchers and farmers up north. And while she says she doesn't want to compromise the food that's grown in the region, it may be time to rethink whether it makes sense to have so many irrigated farms in areas that are naturally so dry.

PAT MULROY: It's the culture of the west, and a lot of what we're talking about here is cultural. You have, what, fifth-, sixth-generation families that have grown up on farms and have lived on farms and on ranches, and you're changing their reality.

And it will be difficult for them to envision it in a different way. I think there's a natural evolution already occurring where some of the less profitable, more difficult to ranch areas are already selling out.

RAY SUAREZ: Those are fighting words to ranchers.

CECIL GARLAND: We're not down there trying to Las Vegas' water. They're up here trying to take our water. That's the simple truth of it. And the point is that in the southwest, with an ever-exploding growing human population, it's on a collision course with the amount of water.

Those people down there are going to have to learn to conserve, have to live within the limits of their own ability to grow, and they have to recognize that. So far as I can tell, they're not willing to do that yet.

The panel talked about growth without ever defining it.  There is population growth, gross receipts tax growth, gross national product growth.  Regional, state or local measures of the economy - like job and income growth can be measured.  And then there is growth in the number of developed acres.  Building growth.  Sprawl growth and redevelopment types of building growth.  18 hole golf course growth. 

But Noooooo.   Its all lumped together.    Tree ring growth is the same as new casinos, is the same as 5000 new people a month.  Growth is growth.  It all needs lots of water and power.

Is the growth good or bad?  The inane question begs the question.  Is it cancerous?   

The closing sentence bugged me too - something about how "city planners" say  stunting growth will cost everyone.   He didn't interview any city planners as far as I saw.  Everybody but Moses was on the panel, but no city planner.  A city planner might have said that sustainability depends on how you build to accommodate growth.  You have to talk about the quality of growth, not just the amount.

Water Rationing, Rate Hikes

John Fleck links to an interesting story from San Gabriel, CA about anticipated water shortages.  Rate hikes, rationing and a moratorium on construction  are discussed.  But when I hear such scary talk I figure it will never come to that.  Just like with energy, new technology will save us.   

Not really.   

The best technology always seems to be applied to producing more and not consuming less.   Corporate power isn't always as good with conservation and waste and other things not related to increasing production.   Producing consumer goods that will save  money is not really what the consumer economy is about or they'd call it the conservation economy instead. 

Natural monopolies like water and power companies have even less reason to sell less. Otherwise the solution to this water challenge might come in the form of a fantastic marketing and financing campaign for composting toilets and gray water systems instead of more reservoirs, pipelines or desalinization plants.   

From the San Gabriel paper:

"Amid a growing water crisis across the state, officials warned Monday that they will cut water to Southern California farmers 30 percent by early next year and are drafting plans that could force residential water rationing for the first time in more than a decade.

The moves come as a combination of drought, rising demand, fragile ecosystems and endangered fish has dramatically reduced the region's water supply.

Officials with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California - the agency that sells water to cities in the region - said the factors could push wholesale rates up as much as 10 percent within two years.

And they predicted the trends could mean the region will lack water to meet all of Southern California's demands about 70 percent of the time.

If we are going to be effectively short on imported water 70 percent of the time, we're going to have to make that up through conservation and changing our lifestyle here in Southern California," said Jeff Kightlinger, the MWD's general manager."

Doesn't 10 percent seem pretty reasonable given the "drought, rising demand, fragile ecosystems and endangered fish"?

Well let's be Right about this -  drought, rising demand, fragile ecosystems and endangered fish. 

Got it: blame the fish for the changes (read- reduced standard of living) you're going to be forced into if you don't sacrifice that fragile ecosystem to meet the rising demand through more large scale water projects.   Perfect.  What's a fish anyway compared to our economy and way of life?

We can't do anything about the drought but, by God, we can keep those new subdivisions coming!    

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.   

More on That

Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group:

How to Understand Anti-Nuclear Hysteria”
        Winter, 1990

(...)  "On the other side, the hysterical zealots' side, a different logic prevails--so different in fact, from the technical point of view, that "logic" seems too kind a word.   But logic it is, though of a different order.   For these people, reason must stand aside for what they perceive as Reason.   They sense, in the very core of their being, truths which the emotionally and spiritually-impoverished discourse of our time allows only a most imperfect expression.   It is as if their--and our--psyches, our souls, are instruments of a most sensitive kind, which can perceive events that cannot otherwise be measured:  the motives of actions, the tilting and sliding (as it were) of the great historical themes, the subtle changes in Zeitgeist of which we are in our daylight moments only dimly conscious.   While the scientist has schooled himself to discern what is objectively verifiable (and therefore "true") from what is not (and therefore humbug), his training per se has not prepared him to understand what is important."

Cold War Waste and Water

Santa Fe New Mexican drops the other big shoe about Santa Fe's existing and proposed water supply after beginning to undress the issue in part 1.   

Andy Lenderman's very first sentence sums it all up.   

"Uphill, there’s 1.38 million cubic yards of nuclear and chemical waste. Downhill, there’s the Rio Grande, one of the state’s main water supplies."

But Don't Worry, for goodness sake.  Trust us.

“If or when contaminants from LANL begin to arrive at the water supply well, there will be time to take actions to protect the water supply,” said Mat Johansen, an environmental manager with the U.S. Department of Energy.

 

 

Westside Water

Under category of Giving Away the Farm, our Water Authority has opened multiple new water pressure zones for an unprecedented round of new westside sprawl. Some get this perfectly. From the Albuquerque Journal:

Cadigan said the economic development argument was a thinly veiled plan to provide water service for homes in previously closed water zones. That, he said, violates a yearlong policy of not opening more than one water pressure zone at a time for development.
The approval immediately opens four zones and gives a green light for three more in the future.
"Tesla can open with the water they have now," Cadigan said. "I think the whole Tesla thing is a red herring."
But County Commission chairman and water board member Alan Armijo said Westland had followed proper procedures and was complying with a policy to ensure the water authority pays no net cost for new services.
"We're not breaking any policy, we're following policy," Armijo said Thursday.
Although the councilors had some "valid concerns," Armijo said, it is up to the City Council to address growth, not the water board.

That covers it. Proper procedures were followed. And those procedures were devised to disconnect growth and water so that no one is responsible. Armijo's quote is straight out of the playbook. The Water Authority model was adopted by our legislature and two local governments precisely because it got the utility out from under any planning responsibility. The model was Nevada. Patricia Mulroy, the Water Empress, brags that planning and growth management are not her problem. The authority is simply meeting market demand. Which is why northern rural Nevada groundwater will soon be pumped and piped to southern urban Nevada - to benefit homebuilders.