HOME / dispatches: Notes from different corners of the world.

Dispatches From the Santa Fe Drought

dispatches:
entries

Watching My Roses Die

Posted Friday, May 24, 2002, at 2:09 PM ET

Alex Heard is the editorial director of Outside magazine. He will file three dispatches on the drought in Santa Fe.

One fun thing about living in a smaller city—my wife and I moved from San Francisco to Santa Fe, N.M., last July—is that local politics play out on a scale that allows you to grasp the issues, watch the gyrations of democracy up close, and make yourself heard.

RSS

These days I'm heard saying "arrrgh" a lot because the main issue I'm grasping goes like this: In about three weeks, barring a miracle, the drought-whomped city water supply will run so low that homeowners will be forbidden from watering their plants. It's called a Stage 4 Water Shortage Emergency, and Santa Fe—a high desert city that bumps up against the Southern Rockies—has never entered such a crisis state before, though there have been three Stage 3s since 1996. (In Stage 3, which we're in now, you can water once a week.) In addition to the fatwa on yard and garden bubbly, Stage 4 would halt new construction permits—a dire outcome for a growing community. As for Santa Fe's all-important tourist economy … well, would you vacation here if the "City Different" becomes the "City Dehydrated"?

Stage 4 is nearly on us because of a combination of drought (God's fault), bad planning (the city's fault), too much water use (all our faults), and bad luck (Satan's fault?). Forty percent of Santa Fe's water supply comes from two reservoirs nestled high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which rise 12,000-plus feet above town. These are replenished mostly by snow-melt. We had a sucky snow year—part of the larger dryness that's afflicting states all over the West—so as of mid-May, the reservoirs were down to 27.5 percent capacity and dropping steadily. (At anything below 20 percent, the water will be too "brackish" for treatment and use.) Most of the rest comes from a set of city-owned wells near the Rio Grande, west of town. If the reservoirs are zonked, the city will go to Stage 4 to avoid overburdening this last line of defense. In Santa Fe's hoped-for future is a grand diversion project that would bring water from the San Juan River up north, but that's a distant dream.

Under Stage 4, you'll be able to get around the H₂O ban in little ways—you can water plants with anything you catch in rain barrels (this'll work great if it ever rains hard again, which it hasn't for weeks), and you can use gray water from your kitchen, laundry, and bathroom. But totin' tub juice won't be enough to save us if Stage 4 lasts a couple of months and there's a late arrival of the "summer monsoon," the not-exactly-tropical storms that usually come in July and August.

For now I'm responding by doing the Good Citizen Shuffle: I have my low-flush toilets, water once a week, shower (fast) with a bucket at my feet, and recently went down the dreaded handynerdyman path by buying and installing four rain barrels and making four more.

But like a lot of people, I'm starting to feel like a chump because it's easy to see that the suffering won't be evenly distributed as this historic calamity unfolds. County residents who live outside the city limits and have their own wells will be able to water whenever they want. There's a defiant guy in my neighborhood with a well on his lot, and though it's no longer legal to use in-town aquifers, he's told the city to screw itself and is watering at will, laughing off the measly $600 in fines he's accrued. Rich people who live behind high adobe walls will have an easier time sneaking in 4 a.m. dribblings for their often lavish landscapes because water-regulation enforcement—there are actual water cops who make the rounds night and day—will happen mostly by eyesight.

Those are the minor irritants. A bigger one is a pricey development northwest of the city called Las Campanas, a place of million-dollar-plus homes and two very thirsty Jack Nicklaus-designed golf courses. ("In the City Different," purrs the Yoda-syntaxed copy on its brochures, "The Community Quintessential.") This 1,717-lot luxury layout was brought here in the early '90s by an Arizona developer named Lyle Anderson. In 1995, Santa Fe purchased its water system from the Public Service Company of New Mexico, the utility company better known as PSN. In doing so, it inherited a complicated set of lease agreements that allow Las Campanas to irrigate its golf courses with well water delivered through city pipes.

Share this article on Digg

Share this article on Buzz

Which means that, technically, the water belongs to Las Campanas, so its caretakers can use it as they see fit. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, Las Campanas is using roughly one of every 12 gallons produced by the municipal water system. In 2001, from April to October, Las Campanas' golf courses consumed 265 million gallons, which is the equivalent of 5,400 houses using 7,000 gallons a month. All this to water 160 acres of fairways, greens, and tee boxes.

The Las Campanas people make for handy villains, given that some of them are what its brochures might call Assholes Incredible. On the letters page of the New Mexican, an L.C. resident recently scorned the "anti-affluent sentiment" revealed by public whining about the golf courses, arguing that "our country is—and, hopefully, always will be—devoted to opportunity and a higher living standard for those who desire to have mall-sized houses."

All of which leads to me having cranky, civil-disobedient thoughts. Right now, I'm staring out my windows at eight chubby rose bushes that are probably 15 years old, and I'm imagining how I'll react when their leaves start looking like pork rinds. To be honest? I'm selfish, and I'm concerned about the property-value impact of my landscaping turning to moonscaping. In short, I'm a guy holding a hose in my hand and thinking, "This situation is not fair. So am I going to play by their goddamned rules?"

dispatches:
entries

1 2 3

Watching My Roses Die

Posted Friday, May 24, 2002, at 2:09 PM ET

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Alex Heard is the editorial director of Outside magazine. He will file three dispatches on the drought in Santa Fe.

COMMENTS

Notes From The Fray Editor:

This article was largely read by those with specific knowledge of the area, or of droughts elsewhere, so there was much well-informed discussion: for instance Keith M. Ellis's contribution. However we are not completely sure about Wayne Palmer's claim that a "city charter dating back to the Aztec days… states in times of extreme drought citizens will be selected for sacrifice at the city's temples. Beware! Your blood may soon be used to maintain the turf on the back nine!" After reading Mitch's post, below, we're getting quite worried about all this bloodthirstiness. On a calmer note, Kit (borrowing the Slate name Cranky Gardener) recommends prayer, and finding more suitable plants.

Reader Comments From The Fray:

Golf courses in the Southwest make me cringe, but that's no reason for an average homeowner to defy nature too. You have elected to live in a part of the country that does not naturally support the kind of greenery we can grow in more temperate zones. You have to take the bad with the good. A sense that "I'm entitled too" is no excuse. Grow a rock garden and feel that you, at least, are not the enemy of the very ground you live on. I mean, does anyone else feel that rose bushes and golf course, and other non-native high-water use plants are worth sacrificing for water you can actually drink? None of us is getting any more than we've got right now.

--Robin Hoffman

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

Just wanted to point out that the need for rationing, "water cops", and urges toward civil disobedience are all signs of a legislated economic disconnect. In this case I am guessing that the price the citizens of Santa Fe pay for water is not allowed to fluctuate according to the supply of water. If it were, the current situation would to some extent correct itself; higher water bills would tell homeowners whether to use their water for watering the lawn or just for drinking. People who really wanted a green lawn would pay extra for it, and no one else would be hurt by their extravagance. As it is, the price is almost certainly set too low, which means the more you use(/waste), the better a deal you get! Not the best way to promote a harmonious and civil society, I think...

If the government was not responsible for the distribution of water there would be less chance of unscrupulous favoritist deals such as the golf course apparently got. If the golf course had to negotiate their long-term contract with a private water company instead of a public one, at the very least they would have paid a fair price for their guaranteed supply(not that private companies can't sometimes make mistakes, too). It is also likely that there would be some provision for rationing their use in extreme drought years, without any need for angry homeowners tearing up their fairways.

--Night Shift Libertarian

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

I understand that paleometeorology studies in Northern New Mexico suggest that the past 200 years have been unusually wet; that the current "drought" represents by far and away the normal rainfall pattern over the past 10,000 years. Probably explains why the Spanish explorers didn't encounter much grass (much less roses) growing in Santa Fe. If this does in fact represent the regression to the mean, and even our middle class Outside magazine editor already harboring revolutionary sentiments, Northern New Mexico politics should become an interesting spectator blood sport. (Apparently, the last 4 Corners population to get pushed out by drought, the Anazazi, turned to cannibalism before they disappeared.)

--Mitch

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

(5/25)

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES