Water for the Taking - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Sal L k Tribune BOO KS Sunday, April 13, 2003 D5 Water for the Taking Tapped out: `Border Oasis' plumbs the politics behind governance of the once - mighty Colorado River -- and why Mexico was left high and dry Border Oasis By Evan R. Ward; University of Arizona Press; $45 BY MARTIN NAPARSTECK Special to The Tribune The subtitle of Evan R. Ward's Border Oasis is revealing: "Water and the Po- litical Ecology of the Colorado River Delta, 1940-1975." The key phrase in un- derstanding Ward's basic argument is "political ecology ": The powerful United States government, influenced by rich farmers and industrialists, adopted policies that damaged the lives of poor Mexicans while a hapless Mexi- can government complained ineffectively. Only 90 miles of the 1,450 -mile Colorado River are in Mexico, where the river empties into the Gulf of Califon nia. In his introduction, Ward summarizes what has happened to that delta: "Cut off from the river's replenishing waters by the grasp of large western cities, power companies, and agricultural interests, the delta's biologically rich wetlands quickly deteriorated. Major dams upriver endan- gered numerous plant and animal species and also threatened the livelihood of the Cocopah Indians, who rely on the river for sustenance." Then he quotes journalist Stan Grossfield of The Boston Globe as writ- ing that the river's water was "diverted to leaky irrigation channels, pipelines, swimming pools in Los Angeles, golf courses in Palm Springs; to cities like Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, San Diego, Tucson, Phoenix, and Las Vegas." Grossfield quotes an unnamed Mexican writer as saying, "In exchange for all these swimming pools, dams, and lakes the [Cocopah] people are dying." Ward uses William Walker, the 19th - century American adventurer who tried to start his own country in Baja California (later he would briefly take THE WEST UN CO VER Books of regional interest over Nicaragua), as a metaphor for U.S. attitudes toward the delta (which abuts the Baja peninsula): To many Ameri- cans, the delta and its water were there for the taking. The key event resulting in great eco- logical damage to the delta would come a century after Walker's failure. Ward writes, "During the fall of 1961, the U.S. Bureau of reclamation (USBR) began draining salt - saturated irrigation water from the Welton- Mohawk Valley in eastern Yuma County, Arizona. It was carried through a drainage channel that emptied into the Gila River. The Gila River then carried the contaminated water in the Colorado River near Yuma, where the USBR believed that the river would dilute the high level of salinity before the water reached the U.S. - Mexican border. In- stead the contaminated water immediately touched off an ecologi- cal crisis, killing crops and damaging farm- land in Mexicali Val- ley. The saline water also polluted domestic water supplies on both sides of the border." Ward adds, in an unusual interpreta- tion, that "Arizona pol- itics made the disaster possible." While his analysis is complicat- ed, it amounts to this: Farmers and others in Arizona successfully put pressure on state politicians to do something about the salt in the irriga- tion water, and they in turn put pres- sure on the U.S. government to get rid of it. In 1965, the United States and Mexico signed a document known as Minute 218 that was supposed to solve the problem. The United States built a 13 -mile "drainage bypass to carry toxic runoff water to a location" where it wouldn't enter the Colorado. It did not solve the problem. In 1972, Mexican President Luis Echeverria, speaking to the U.S. Congress, asked "why the United States does not use the same boldness and imagination that it applies to solving complex problems with its enemies to the solution of simple problems with its In 1972, Mexican President Luis Echeverria, speaking to the U.S. Congress, asked "why the United States does not use the same boldness and imagination that it applies to solving complex problems tenth its enemies to the solution of simple problems with ikfiiends. " friends." As Ward writes, "Echeverria successfully transformed a regional is- sue into an international platform of Mexican nationalism." Although Ward presents far more examples of Americans doing things to damage the delta region than of Mexi- cans, in the end, he calls for a shared sense of responsibility: "Compartmen- talizing responsibility for these prob- lems only breeds fear and mistrust be- tween Mexicans, Americans, and native groups in the delta." Still, the Colorado River Delta is haunted by the ghost of William Walker. Ward writes, "Methods of conquest changed from physical force to legal and engineering maneuvers." He adds, "Al- though Walker's scheme for coloniza- tion met an early end, his `ghost' reap- peared in the form of new plans on both sides of the border to initiate different models of regional development. Walk' er's legacy reveals a theme that unifies the history of the Colorado River Delta: the conquest and control of land and. water." The ghost metaphor is not as power- ful, however, as a full-page photograph that first ran in National Geographic in 1973 and that appears near the middle of Ward's book. It shows a Mexican farmer in the midst of a dry field, dry clumps of claylike soil in his hands. More so than Walker's ghost, it is an image of death. Martin Naparsteck reviews books from and about the West for The Salt Lake Tribune.