Cocoposts

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.

A Piece of the Big Pie

John Fleck has a most excellent piece on the Bush Administration's rejection of the proposed Navajo - New Mexico water deal over the San Juan River. Albuquerque Journal

In it, he effectively crams the facts and details into a clear and consise concise (Gosh I can't spell.) Even if we'd never heard of the issues previously - never heard of GW Bush, (Oh, to dream!) or never heard of the Navajo, a place called Gallup, a river named for a Saint, or a Senator called Saint Pete - if was all new, we could read Fleck and put the whole thing together into a giant fractal pie of understanding.

It's that good.

Speaking of fractal pie - pecan.

Rio Puerco Recorp Water

The Albuquerque Journal headline: Water, Water Everywhere just screams out for the snarky blog remark but it's too easy since the story does it all with the quote from Sandoval County Commissioner Jack Thomas:

It's just unbelievable.

On a number of levels.

Flaming Gorge

This water transfer scheme is still alive.

Water Planning Not So Much

Interesting recent stuff in the Alibi about the Drinking Water Project by Christie Chisholm who makes a boo-boo in the early part.   

The “customers” the bottle—a marketing device from the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority—refers to are the residents within Albuquerque city limits.

Touchy point since the whole reason the  Authority was formed, as I posit relentlessly, was to eliminate the city's sole control of the water utility for the benefit of land developer interests represented by the county government.  ::Sigh::

The Tribune commentary by Consuelo Bokum says we need water planning.  How can you disagree?  But the heart of the matter, or a bi-value anyway, is just how little control local citizens have over the situation.  We'll get our hopes all up about a water plan then when it tanks we'll blame government.  Perfect.   

Most people probably think we should do water planning whatever it means.   Many still think we should do land use planning - whatever that means.  But few will stick around to get down to the big bright brass tacks - implementing even the best plans is nearly impossible. 

For one thing, existing laws and practices preclude a lot of would-be solutions.  Implementation often requires painstaking code amendments -  difficult in local government departments decimated by the we-hate-government-decades.   For another thing, government can't control or predict land use for shit.  And what's a water plan without a land use component?

Land developers who pull strings have worked consistently for years to assure that land planning is marginalized.   MRCOG predictions don't really reflect land use plans (that's a chicken and egg thing they'll tell ya) and the basic constructs of the original Albuquerque - Bernalillo County Comprehensive Plan have been openly mocked for years.  This is in spite of many years of good work and the best intentions.  And it is a long story.   Stay awake.

Whether or not you personally buy-into the contention that free market forces apply or function in land development and will magically solve everything, (the land developer as wizard running a close second to favorite guise of land developer as Santa Claus), know the power of this ridiculous meme.  It has handicapped planning and permanently truncated the connection between what little land use planning either the city or county may attempt from whatever is going on with the state's largest water utility - a big fat component of any water plan.

The Planned Growth Strategy, the last large scale planning effort attempted by both the City and County, galvanized opposition to planning among the economic development crowd downtown  - those who cared the most.  The work threatened to base utility fees on costs, integrate land use policy with pricing and encourage infill - scary commie stuff like that.   Easy to defeat or weaken when existing neighborhoods are easily threatened by bad infill and no one speaks for preserving the much more profitable to develop city edges.  Profitable especially if service costs are flat or subsidized.   

There was never much connection between utility and land use planning in Albuquerque's relatively short planning history.   Utility decisions, like where State funds for water lines were expended in the valley, for example,  followed the direction of who was in power not what any plan said should take place - even if it represented a careful choice among examined alternatives with a public advisory group over a three year process.  Noooo. Papa knows best.*

With formation of the Water Authority, the authority for water was formally separated from the entities with any statutory authority over land use planning - municipal and county government.  In the absence of state mandated land use planning this separation is fatal.  Or certainly a kick in the groin to the idea of managing land use and water delivery together.  I'm assured by the guys that this is not the case because the Authority has a resolution calling for consistency with the comprehensive plan.  But it is voluntary.  So big whoop. 

With the quiet subterfuge and all that government-blaming and squealing about private property rights we can be forgiven for forgetting who pays in the end for not planning.  The fictional free market isn't free, it requires extending roads and public services willy nilly out to the Puerco for every tom dick and hairy development proposal imaginable.  Go try and water plan that. 

    *Raymond G. Sanchez  

Water Policy

Sandoval County will get in the  business of desalinizing water,  the Albuquerque Journal notes.   

County commissioners voted Thursday to approve an agreement with Recorp Partners— the Scottsdale, Ariz., company with plans to develop Rio West— that would give the county a 66 percent share in a "water entity" that would be distributing desalinized water from the Rio Puerco basin.  "I think this is the future of Sandoval County," Commission Chairman Don Leonard said at the meeting.

Great quote.   The future of Sandoval County is expensive water treatment to subsidize sprawl.

The creation of the water entity, which county staff will begin drawing up while the wells are drilled and tested, is contingent on a significant amount of water being found deep underneath the Rio Puerco surface, he said.   The entity would sell the water, which would be treated by a desalinization plant built in the Rio Puerco, at wholesale prices to other municipalities in Sandoval County, according to agreement terms.

They'll sell the water to the same folks who are taxed for the project in the first place.  At generous wholesale prices.   And they already have water service.  Such a deal!   For Recorp.  Makes you wonder who the Partners are.

In contrast, is the story about Mesa del Sol and the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Water Utility on the Journal front page.  Too bad for the Mesa del Sol developer that the Water Utility has suddenly grown a pair.  Forest City Covington thought annexation entitled them to service, but apparently not.  Unlike everywhere else.    Now no net expense rules apply.  Oh, and about your new urbanist, water conserving, stormwater-happy and jobs-housing balanced development?   We can't handle that with our current water supply.   

We can however, handle water service gifted westward for the mattress factory,  jet factory, flying electric car factory and miles of housing sprawl in between.  We call that  development at net expense.   
 

   

Water Empress Wins

Las Vegas Review Journal notes big water news:

In a landmark decision, the Southern Nevada Water Authority won almost 20 billion gallons of faraway groundwater for its pipeline on Monday, but it was not quite as much as the agency wanted.

In a 56-page decision described as "measured" and "conservative," the state's chief water regulator cleared the authority to export as much as 60,000 acre-feet of water a year from a White Pine County valley 250 miles north of Las Vegas.

Whether or not the growth of the Vegas building industry is sustainable or not,  wasn't on the table. 

... During the hearing, [Matt Kenna, Western Environmental Law Center] and others warned that large-scale groundwater pumping in White Pine County could wipe out springs, rare wildlife and the livelihoods of rural residents.

Several pipeline opponents also tried to link the project to Owens Valley, the eastern California watershed laid to waste nearly a century ago after a massive water grab by Los Angeles.

[Water Empress Mulwray] Mulroy said the authority remains on schedule to start delivering water to Las Vegas from across rural Clark, Lincoln and White Pine counties in 2015. 
By then, the water authority could own nearly all of the private land in Spring Valley.

In separate transactions since July, the authority has snapped up seven ranches in the 1 million acre watershed for a combined price of almost $79 million.

  ::Forget it Matt.  It's Chinatown.:: 

Flood Protection

Albuquerque Journal Westside about how Rio Rancho residents will pay for storm drainage - or "road and flood control" improvements.  The chickens are coming home to roost. 

Residents of the Los Rios area in Unit 17, who object to the SAD, have said in public meetings that a $10 million voter-approved bond for the Southern Sandoval County Arroyo Flood Control Authority should be sufficient to provide a solution to their drainage problems.

That won't be near enough.   

The process to commodify and  repackage property into uniform bits of the American Dream destroys fundamental features of the landscape.   Routinely.  The "grading and drainage" practices of conventional development  leave little undisturbed.  Existing plant and animal habitat  is destroyed and topsoil is reshaped and exposed.  The features that defined the place and, most importantly, it's inherent value as a filter for stormwater is are lost, altered and forgotten.

Until it rains really hard.

Hard rain flows fast from paved surfaces, cutting into what was is left of topsoil and washing it  downstream destroying road culverts, roads, driveways, etc.   This is also routinely portrayed as an act of nature rather than as a consequence of development - conveniently buffering criticism about inadequate public investment in storm drainage.    

Pardon me for saying, but $10 million is a drop in the bucket. 

Water and Land

John Fleck sent and posted the link to Water Wired who takes on land use and water planning issues.   The newsy bit is that the Nevada Legislature has a bill to restrict consideration of local land use planning in water determinations by the State Engineer.

This fits with the intentional divorce of the two policy issues that Nevada pioneered.  The Water Empress, long time director of various iterations of the Southern Nevada Water Authority,  made it clear from her earliest days of reign that land planning was very separate (read: a commie plot) from her work of providing water for southern Nevada's growth (read: the house building, lending, developing and selling businesses).

This too has been the silent vision of Albuquerque's development community.  Creation of the  Albuquerque Water Authority (or whatever they call it now), among other things* truncated existing  comprehensive planning statutory requirements from the largest water utility in the State.   

During Albuquerque's multi-year effort, the Planned Growth Strategy, developers howled at the perceived  threat of  using water and sewer line expansion policy as a growth management tool.  Even seemingly simple stuff like lower impact fees for new development where existing water line capacity existed was fiercely resisted by developers whose investments depend on publically subsidized westward sprawl.      PGS was nearly scuttled.  The Water Authority was formed by legislative act (Manny) soonafter.

* Creation of the water authority also created separate bonding authority, doubling expanding the fees collected by the same bond attorneys.  Follow that money and you'll be in tall grass.