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Dispatches From the Santa Fe Drought

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Water-Sucking Golf Pros

Posted Monday, May 27, 2002, at 12:18 PM ET

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

Is Santa Fe auditioning to become the new Los Angeles? It's starting to seem like it, and maybe Joan Didion and Mike City of Quartz Davis should think about relocating and putting some green chile in their acts.

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There are fires raging in the hills! (Because of the drought we're in, the government has closed the huge national forest that abuts the city; unfortunately, careful oversight hasn't stopped two dangerous blazes from sparking to life so far this spring.) There are moody, slouching celebrities all over town! (I've personally seen Gene Hackman, Shirley MacLaine, and Whosis the Brunette from Three's Company.) And more and more, there are rumors of a Chinatown-like conspiracy involving the place that everybody loves to hate: Las Campanas, the golf course and residential development that is using way more than its share of H₂O as Santa Fe heads into a summer of unparalleled water restrictions on homeowners and businesses.

Recently, hoping to work up a head of steam about the loathed luxury resort, I went out to Las Campanas and took the standard prospective-buyer tour with a real-estate rep who showed me an $899,000 home, the development's gargantuan indoor riding arena, its lavish indoor pool, the snazzy clubhouse, gym, and restaurants, and the beautiful and (in this context) terrifyingly green golf courses.

I'm not a knee-jerk golf hater—I grew up playing the game on a parched, probably-shouldn't-have-been-there course in Western Kansas—but this scene did seem rather appalling. Las Campanas is set amidst the harsh, rolling desert hills that stretch between our two local mountains ranges, the Sangre de Cristos and the Jemez. It's the kind of natural setting that even lizards and cacti consider hardship duty; but here sits 160 acres of pampered greensward. More insanely, the courses use a cool-weather turf called bentgrass that has about as much business in northern New Mexico as it does on planet Mercury.

Las Campanas employees have obviously been taught to "take charge." As the real-estate salesperson drove me around, she explained the water situation, saying that Las Campanas has its own water rights (true) and that it's a distortion to talk about the development "using" all the water it takes from city pipes every week. Because? "Because what people don't understand," she said, "is that a lot of that water is not being used. It's being stored in lakes." Hmmm.

After my tour I spoke with Las Campanas's president, Bill Deihl, who made his case clearly and without apology: The development was duly approved years ago by Santa Fe County; it has legal water rights; it provides many jobs; it's doing what it can to conserve (a relative concept, I'll admit); and it has offered to pay $100,000 to help build an emergency pipeline to bring in city-supplied waste water, to ease its intake of the fresh stuff. Beyond that, he said, they'll do what they have to do. And that won't include watering just once a week—which is what I'll have to do under the looming Stage 4 restrictions.

"We are not going to approach the golf course that way," Deihl said, "because this is a business."

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You're naughty, Bill, but you've got a point. So for now I'll hope the city figures out a way to sue your plaid pants off—which may happen because the people of Santa Fe are really starting to blow their tops about this. Last Thursday night the City Council convened an emergency meeting to debate and take public comment on Las Campanas' pipeline proposal. The mood was running about 90/10 against Las Campanas, though it was hard to keep an exact tally because a couple of speakers were coming from … somewhere else. One guy, the owner of a local spa and hot tub company, pulled a set of magnets out of a bag and explained that it's possible to place a positive charge on water as it courses through pipes and that the mesmo-charged result "increases plant yields 250 percent, with half the water."

Most of the citizens were amazingly cogent and informed, and there were two quite interesting moments. One man said that if Las Campanas didn't straighten up, it could expect "extra-legal" actions by outraged citizens. (In the hallway later, I asked him to elaborate—he said a serious band of people are considering a clandestine protest attack on the development's water system.) Another had dug up old language from County Commission proceedings held when Las Campanas was going through its approval process. In a 1992 meeting, Las Campanas attorney Jene Gallagos was asked if the development would consider itself subject to county and city water ordinances during a drought. He replied, "… we agree to subject ourself to broader control in a water shortage situation."

Asked about this at the meeting by a city councilor, who wanted to know if Las Campanas would submit to watering only once a week, the current lawyer for the company lamely replied, "That's a hypothetical." Maybe it won't be for long.

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Water-Sucking Golf Pros

Posted Monday, May 27, 2002, at 12:18 PM ET

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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)

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