Western Water: Running on Empty

You You We will always have a water, but we have a

national water policy now. It's called Confusions. I believe there's going to be a physical wire if we come to that. There's going to be a showdown. That better get a goddamn shot gun and fight me for it because I've got a well that was there. It's been there. And I'm going to pump water till a day I die. You can see here the place where we're standing all around here is quite a bit hard. Then land around us and the reason is when the drought come out in the dust bowl in the 1950s there was fences here. And they caught that topsoil that blowed off of the fields due to the like rain fall. And that's reason that this is hard here. And it looks like here is the way you'll offer the old homesteaders windmill. So here it is and it looks like here is a piece of the fan that come off of this here here. It's a

little bit heavier there. It won't come out there. But you can see what the rainfall does far here. And whenever you get it, it will hurt you. The water wealth and water poverty. It just isn't enough water to go around. Earl and Kathy Chancellor have to haul 32 miles to get a drink. And I score I wouldn't live out here hauling water. It just wasn't the thing to do. We tried to drill a well and didn't come up

with any water. And it's costing roughly $100 a month. For gas, they'll keep the tires, the broken springs and stuff like that to haul the water. And some major damage goes out like the four -wheel drive and then we're talking more expensive. You're talking about an average of about $2 ,000 a year just to get the water here. You have to schedule water hauling and your water uses according to the weather. In the winter time, when water runs low and we can't get out to get water, we go back to the outhouse. The city folks don't believe in what we usually do back then. They only flush it ever rather so or whenever. I don't rhyme about being a mellow when it's yellow. You have to really conserve water and you know the expense of hauling it. It's hard to get ahead living out here. I think it's funny when

someone from town will talk about their water bill. It's all my new compared to what we're paying for water. And it comes right out of the tap, never ending. Never ending water, with it this desert would be a paradise, but it's not paradise, it's hot as hell. The sun shines from dawn till dusk all day, every day. This is it folks, the Great American Desert. But this land isn't the desert of pioneer days when people bake to death on those long hard trails west. Now if this is a sunbelt, the sunbelt is the fastest growing area in the U .S. And all these people expect to turn their faucet and find water. There's two cities that are getting bigger every day. Farmers pumping

water to irrigate some of the most productive farmland in the country. And below the surface, the nation's mineral reserves wait for development. And that's the future. Right now, today, there is not enough water for everyone. All the water underground on the surface and what people can catch from the skies has been appropriated. So who's going to drink and who's going to suck sound? Of course, right now, we're in chaos that we don't totally understand what water we're fighting for. Other than that, we know what we need. We need what we have been using all our lives. The question has always been there. How much of the water that comes down these streams belong to the Indians because of prior laws or prior court decisions? History tells us that we Indians were here first and we own all the land that you see in the state of New Mexico. And the non -Indians came in and disregarded the native inhabitants and claimed lands with their king and their

country and so forth and allowed settlement. Without everyone once considering that the land was already enused by the natives here. Ever since the Indians had been defeated in battle, no one paid much attention to their rights. And I think the Indians have been able to survive only because we had a handful of people, primarily religious leaders. And a few senators and congressmen who felt in their conscience that it was only right, fair, good, equitable to protect a people ignorant of their non -Indian ways. I don't think that the Indians got any more right to this land because they were conquered people. Congress had given Indians rights as wards of the government and part of those rights were rights to water. There's a difference. Non -Indians water rights are controlled by the state. Indian

water rights are controlled by the federal government. That water was not given to the Indians or to the non -Indians. That water was God -given thing that belongs to all of us. Congress gave Indians federal water rights and those rights take precedence to state control. Right now in northern New Mexico, a legal battle that has been simmering for nearly two decades is coming to a close. New Mexico versus Amat could set a precedent that would shift the entire water exchange to the control of the Indians. What's at stake in this lawsuit is control of the water resource. Traditionally, in New Mexico, the state has controlled the allocation of water. What this suit means is the preblo is not the state may end up controlling the water resources in New Mexico and they will become the water brokers of the Southwest. Looking at it in terms of the future, I would hope that the people here would be receptive to sharing the water. If we have ample sums of

decree to us and the amounts that we're not going to be using have our non -Indian neighbors use it. If they pay us whatever the rate might be one for water back then. Regardless of how this goes, I wouldn't pay a dime for water that God put there for all of us. I wouldn't pay the government, the Indians or non -Indians, one damn -red cent. New Mexico versus Amat was originally filed as a routine matter by the state engineer to fix for all time who owned what water along the Rio -Poacay and its tributary. At the time, no one had any inkling how high the social and financial costs were going to go for Pauacay and ultimately the nation. Grandfather's an Indian, the other grandfather is a non -Indian being sued, one is suing the other. What do you think the little kid feels? Also,

we've got Indians who have bought land within the valley outside of the Pueblos. They're defendants in the suit. The Pueblos are piling soon against them as well. So, you know, this whole thing doesn't make any sense at all. My son is married to an Indian. My cousin is married to an Indian. My other cousin is married to an Indian. They say, one, our hell is going on here. What it's caused is deep division, polarization, talks of violence, talks of tremendous separation of authority. And it's caused talks of, geez, this is the worst thing that's happened in terms of relationships between the Hispanics and the Indians. You know, we're cousins. We're related. That's a sadness of this case. Back in 1966, as far as the valley was concerned, the Amit case had just been a few lawyers shuffling paper water around. The Indians got tougher. They asserted

they had federal water rights and the right to private attorneys. The courts agreed. For the first time in this lawsuit, the Indians became the movers and chakers in the lawsuit where before they had simply been defendants. Soon, that paper water was going to start affecting real people. In 1981, a special master appointed by the New Mexico District Court ruled on the upheld the theory that the Pueblos had special water rights and quantified those theories in such a way that the amount of Pueblo Indian water rights would essentially consume all the water in the Rio -Puwaki stream system, leaving none for none in the Internet Valley. Right here, when you're old enough to walk, you're old enough to carry a shovel.

And so I have been helping dad as a kid and went on as I grew up doing the same thing, taking care of the land. But it's quite true that I can remember that I could barely tow the shovel and by godly dad had me out there working in the field. Well, I height -field this way that if our water is taken away from us, in the year 2000, perhaps when my grandchildren grew up, they will never be able to have or see what I have had in my life. If they will probably have to land up going the safe way and buying their corn and buying their restables, and they will miss out on quite a bit. I actually feel sorry for them. What's going to happen if the lawyers for the BIA win this case, and they take the water away from the non -Indian people, the ways of living for this community and the Numbay and Puehwaki communities will change

drastically. We will no longer be able to live like our fathers and grandfathers have lived. The lawyers for BIA are all angles, and I don't think they're familiar or aware of the problems or what they're creating. If they could just for a moment stop to think that if they win the case, what they would do to people in this valley, I would think that they would probably back off a little bit and would be willing to sit down and compromise with them. With the Indians and the non -Indians, I'm sure that if they were to have lived, our lives the way we have lived them, they would have more understanding of the need to leave things as they have been. Well, what we're passing apples and farms to our children here, the lawyers for the BIA will probably be passing on the dollars that they have earned. And our hard earned tax dollars, what they're earning to fight us. And so they'll pass to their grandchildren dollars and we'll pass to our grandchildren

farmland and apples. I mean, the large majority of the population, the Hispanic population, are no different than the Pueblo. They're equally poor. They're as equally as speak most of them still speak. A language that is far into American English, they all speak Spanish. They have customs that are clearly not, you know, on track with 20th century America. We're trying to assimilate you know with the rest of the crowd. But there's no question about it that for the Spaniard or Mexican that land is above everything. The Indians who, on many cases and many generations, have been left out this case with legal representation, they're in good shape because the US government takes care of their legal bills, provides their lawyers and non -Indians many times are sued by their own government

and have no funds to pay for the lawyer. I think non -Indians here are getting the short end of the stick. As wards of the US government, the Pueblos have received three and a half million dollars to fight their side of the Amid case. Three and a half million for private attorneys, consultants and research all paid for by the US taxpayer. And now they've got all these lawyers fighting us with our own money. So that's kind of hard for one group to have all the help and the other group to pay all the taxes. It's another misconception. I wish that I didn't pay taxes because the government took about $4 ,000 for me last year. So if I'm not paying taxes, then where did all that money go? It's when our water rights were threatened. The US government, as a trustee for the Indian people, came forward with the funds to help us. Otherwise, where would we turn for help? But the Pueblos, because of the federal government's failure to protect their lands during the first 80

years of American control and the Rio Grande Valley, the Pueblos lost most of their good irrigation irrigated lands and the entire agricultural base of their traditional economy was destroyed. The land really has no value in terms of money. Once you lose your land, there's not much you have left. As a kid, I remember the elders referring to the water that was running on the stream. And now, in recent years, there's hardly any water. Serpent's water flowing down the river. Because I suspect that the reason for that is that there's been more ditch diversions upstream. I had a town meeting in Pawaki, and usually at town meetings, I get 20, 25 people, little towns in Pawaki. I'd show up at the high school, and there was about 300 people,

and all wanted to talk about the water suit. This is a battle between attorneys. All their afteries are damn mighty dollars. This has been going on and on and on. And our own attorneys for the non -Indian is just as interested as they'd like to prolong it. And the bureaucrats, the work for the BIA, all they want is to let love to have it on for 30 years so that they will have a job to justify their salaries. Will the paper water ever fall out of the courts of Michigan Fields? As it draws to an end, I think people are realizing that the Indian tribes have handled this thing rather well, and things seem to be going in our direction. We don't take pride in that. We have set out to do a job that has been taught to us by the white man. We have sufficient revenues coming into the pueblo so

we can take care of the community of things that we have to take care of. And I don't think we want to get into it so that we have no regard for our own lifestyle. You know, it's always nice to visit Albuquerque, all the bright lights and the traffic and everything, everything is convenient. But it's always a welcome sight to turn in from the main highway and come in here where it's quiet and nobody bothers you. You can do your own thing and have your privacy and not worry about the rest of the world. And I think we want to keep it that way. We're not giving up at all. We're going to fight for what it's ours and we're going to fight until we win. We don't intend to lose. Several hundred more water suits may be filed by Indians. The Bureau of Indian

Affairs estimates to prosecute one suit will cost a taxpayer $3 million. That's not counting the cost to individuals and what the tribes themselves are paying for their own lawyers. What's really sad for the people of New Mexico and Montana and Arizona is that it doesn't have to be that way. After all the years of battling, can New Mexico versus Amat even render justice? In the adversary system, whoever pays you and then you are absolutely beholden to that person and to his position. What it emphasizes is these outrageous claims on both sides and that's the way the system is supposed to work. It doesn't work well with shared natural resources like water. We've always had very good relations all the way through. I don't know why in the world you know this thing ever came about. I don't know who's promoting it and something that might be something selfish, interesting involved in this thing here

because there's disturbing a lot of poor people over here. They can't afford to pay a lawyer $75 an hour to go out there and those lawyers don't even know what to say. The harm is something that you finally get to I guess once the adjudication is over and if you're disappointed with the results you say I'd been harmed. But I can't see that the adjudication process itself unless it is rigged and is not fair. That's something else and that's true of any legal proceeding under our adversary system. There are breed amongst themselves. I don't know what can I say about lawyers. Lawyers play a game, the game of law and unfortunately the game of law isn't fair to people all the time. The Spanish came to the West in the 16th century and they had to settle water disputes too but they went about it differently. Well the first thing that Spanish would do would be to say we're not going to make any permit standards.

We're going to make a deal and we'll make it for a while and so long as that deal works. They call them Repartimiento. Repartio in old Spanish means to share. It's Compartio in former Spanish but Repartio meant to divide up between people and they would call these Repartio Mientos de Agua and they would go out and split up the water, specifically taking into account the effect of everybody's use on everybody else's use. And the whole principle was really we'll make a deal to keep the community peace for now so that everybody gets a little. The Indians got more because they were there first because they were protected but they didn't get everything. American law is a law of absolutes. Not only are the lawyers trying to fix for all time the water running in the streams but determine whose blood is Indian and whose isn't. I understand from some stories that were told to us by my grandfather that one of my

great -grandfathers used to wear a braid. So quite frankly I think that if anyone really wants to know the truth I think that perhaps I'm as much Indian as a lot of the Indians that claim to be Indians in our fighting for this water. The Poakey Pueblo kept trying to disappear. It is so either intermarried with the surrounding population that is virtually indistinguishable or had been until 1935 when the federal government made an active effort to reconstitute once again the Poakey Pueblo and constituted as a viable separate institution. Now it is so separate from the rest of that valley according to the lawyers to have all these astronomical water rights, the right to different kinds of protections when there's been so much intermarriage in that valley that everybody admits they have a little Indian blood.

It's crazy. And we've just got to start keeping these disputes out of the courts where tension is generated, where attorneys dominate and where the rule of law is subjected to probably the most amount of politics. The irony is after the lawyers have fought it out tooth and nail, compromise is possible. Historically the paper water claimed in court has never been awarded to either side. In fact no one to date has been dried up or driven off their land. Litigation is still tearing communities apart. And whereas some people go to the faucet and get water, people out here are getting it out of bottles and we've been getting it out of bottles delivered from home stake if you want to trust the quality of their water for eight years.

It's not very convenient. There is only about 35 families in the area that are involved with the lawsuit and many people feel that they're selfish, they're greedy, they're out to make a big buck. It's going to hurt the whole community. The real estate agents told me that as soon as the buyer came in, was looking for a place out in the country that mentioned this one. These areas out here and the buyer said, no, we've got bad water, we don't really want to look at them. And so it's not just, you know, as far as I'm concerned, the investment I've gotten in this place is the value of it zero now. I can't sell it. Water conflicts usually wind up being resolved in a court.

In the AMOB proceeding, the question is a matter of distribution of water supplies, water quantity. In grants, there is a question of water quality and the courts are being asked to decide whether water quality damage should be paid by a company to people who live downstream of their waste disposal. After eight years of this and trying to negotiate with them and work out a system where we clean up the aquifer, we've been left no choice but go to litigation and see if the courts can't sell it. The home stake water case is called head versus home stake. Milton had and 35 of his neighbors have sued home stake mining company because they believe that their water quality at their homes in the Murray and Broadview subdivisions has been degraded by the home stake uranium mill just north of those subdivisions. They have filed for the costs of those damages, which are a total of about $170 million

with a damaged claim. I don't see that these people can prove any kind of damages. Or maybe the property has been hard to sell, but all property in this area is hard to sell. The uranium industry is in a very, very bad slump right now. When we moved here in 1975, we sold a very nice home in Milan. We took all the money we had and plopped it into this little place. We planned to fix it up and make it very nice and spend the rest of our life here. We planned to add on and make it a wonderful place to live. Then when they told us the water was bad, we said, well, let's wait and hold off a while and see for sure they're going to clean it up. As time went on, we realized it's ridiculous to invest money in something that is no longer of any value. So here I am 43 years old. All our money is invested in this area and here we sit. Well,

I think that with the economy, the way it is around here that I think these people just want to leave. The uranium industry seems to be on hold right now and there just isn't anything to do. So I think they're just looking for a way out. What no one in Murray Acres or Broadview Acres argues about is that a mile or so from their homes is a 23 million ton uranium tailings pile. Tailings are the material left over from uranium ore processing. Like many resource problems of today, tailings piles were never seen as a potential problem. They were a solution to an immediate need, uranium. What was a simple solution has become a major problem today because no one gave any thought to the future and their future is our present. The tailings are laid on top of the ground, on top of the surface. And they are laid out in a slurry which is mixed liquids and water, half liquid and half water. Some of that water evaporates, others of it seeps down

underground. Those tailings put the ground water near those sites at risk. The most dramatic example is in the grants area where the home stake pile and the anticon of pile are found on underground streams which feed the tricky water supplies of grants in the lawn. We've all felt that it came from that pond and we've felt home stakes had a mission to the voluntary agreement in 1976. Their mission to this stipulation on bringing the lawn water in here was all done. They say because the government forced them to but I personally believe they would not have done it had they not been a little guilty. You don't spend a million dollars or so if you're not a little guilty. In this year that I've been here, I've been to several meetings that the home stake company has put out and informed us of just exactly what they are doing to try to clean up our water. And I was impressed. I was very impressed at how much time, money and consideration they are giving to this area.

Right over here Mrs. Hayes is home. She's showed us some problems she still has associated with her water and it makes me wonder if there's been a whole lot of improvement in the water quality the underground wells. How come she still got a lot of sodium problems or calcium carbonate problems or whatever they are associated with the problems she's having with her home. She's seen her first home destroyed here the water salts brewing the walls and a ceiling of her mobile home and they had to purchase another home to live in. And she still seems to have the problem. They're still unable to grow a garden. I have kidney problems which is I have toxic you know, poisons filled up in my blood. And I also have very severe adema and that is I feel like the water is one problem that I do have causing a lot of the swelling. I feel perfectly safe drinking in the tap water. My hair hasn't fallen out and I

don't glow at night. No one's arguing that uranium tailings about 150 million tongues worth dumped on the surface west of the Rockies are dangerous to human health. The pollutants that leak from tailings pods are pollutants which have well recognized health problems. We're talking about selenium, arsenic, zinc, lead, uranium, radium. These are materials with a long set of technical literature which identifies health problems. No one knows what the health effects have been from the home state tailings pile. But we do have a situation in marine blood view acres as a good example where people have been living and using water that's contaminated over a long period of time. And that chronic exposure 10 years of drinking water with high selenium can lead to a long term buildup and a slow development of effects. And that chronic effect is what we see from uranium mill sites. We don't see many acute problems, no quick

disease, slow chronic development disease. Our concern is the children that lived here were born and raised here. The health problems they may experience in the future you just have no way of knowing because no one has done any kind of study. This hasn't happened as far as we know before so how you know you can't very well know what that could do. It's never really been a problem my kids and a little boy he still drinks it, it doesn't bother him. We just haven't because we've gotten used to having the job. I can tell you for sure that my children when they come home for a visit overnight have diarrhea. And you have to understand most of these people seem to have a psychological problem. You know anytime someone tells you your water is bad don't drink it. You start taking the bottle water and whatnot and it's a hassle and you brush your teeth and you use the water out of your tap and you rinse your mouth and you try to spit it out and you think you take a little sip and you think maybe I should and maybe I should you know and it becomes a psychological thing to a lot of

people. It's very difficult to prove long term health problems but that's what people are really afraid of when they turn the town. In my view I think that the best claims legally are likely to be economic damages, money damages because the health concerns though they're real and though they're very prominent on the residents of that area's minds. Those are very difficult to prove unequivocably. You need to have a very complex argument to show health effects. When you show property damage I think that that's something that a judge or a jury is more likely to understand. A home has been damaged when they can show the different kinds of damages and the inability to sail. I think that those are going to be very easily understood by a decision maker more easily than a health effect problem. The suit is going to hurt the community as a whole rather than just a few people that live here. But a home stake in Kermagee are the only ones that are left in this community, mine in

Uranium. And it will hurt if the suit goes so far as to really damage home stake and a home stake's corporate were to make the decision to close this place down as they could. It's already been done in this community. We've seen it with golf closing down, we've seen it with ranchers pulling out, Cobb Newcures gone and Akonda closed their doors. It wouldn't take a lot to talk corporate people into pulling the plug on this place and leaving us all looking around at each other. I think the company has disregarded all the regulations that have been set forth up to date. And I think that they have total disregard for the human factor. Why should we clean up Uranium mill tailings? I think that the best reasons are because they contain toxic materials which are leaking into water supplies which are currently being used and will be used in the future. And we are contaminating valuable resources in a permanent way.

I came to this country in 1918, February 1918. And there was lots of water ever for it, because it snowed then in the winter and it rained in the summer. By July, the first we were having big rains, heavy rains, the creeks were up, it's just getting dry and dry. Always land you see here was there was somebody settled in every hundred and

sixty acres out there. A lot of the people come from back in India and I went, they always and I guess they come out and seen always flat land. And they didn't think about the rainfall and they thought they had the best country in the world. Land, limitless land, more land than any eastern or ever dreamed of. That was the promise of the west to the homesteaders. So much space the congress gave it away, a hundred and sixty acres for everyone who would farm. So they came with hope and that's what the west has always been built on. Hope the gold or oil or water wouldn't give out. The father homesteaded up above Buckhorn, that is about forty miles beyond Silver City. And that's where it snowed and rained up there. Then we got enough snow and the winter to put moisture in the ground and rain in the summer. All those homesteaders

could raise a good dry land crop. I just blowed in and it got them dust boomers. Yeah, they dry land farm from about nineteen five till nineteen fifty there. For a period we'll say fifty years for round figures was dry farming. And like one of the homesteaders told us it first come here to come Indian and Nelma is that they seen this level land and they didn't give the second thought about rainfall. Because where they come from they got too much rainfall there. On the 14th day of April of nineteen thirty five there struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky. You can see that the storm come in the cloud looked like black and through our mighty nation it left a dreadful track. From I'll be Kirk and

Clovis and all new Mexico. They said it was the blackest that ever they had sold. In 1890 most Americans grew up farming. They headed west with Washington's blessing to settle the plains like the east with small family owned farms. What the settlers in Congress didn't know was west of the hundredth meridian the rainfall drops below the twenty inches a year you need to dry land farm. The first year they made a bumper crawl. They said it was real good. And then the second year it was dry and the third year was worse and then they had a drought and a lot of them left in there. But then they kind of come back. But the farmers look round out. Some years we didn't have enough to bring the beans up but with planum drying it always rained about the first July. And we did that up till there in

nineteen forty nine is last crop of beans we planted in nineteen fifty. It just got so dry that you could plant them that stayed there all year and wouldn't even come up. Our weather pattern changed completely. We didn't get any winter moisture and we didn't get any summer either there. The dust bowl days seem far away to the sun belt but two things haven't changed. We still can't make rain and the sun is just as hot. Do you know when the rain hits the hot desert it actually burns up? Only four percent of the water that we get is rain or snow actually gets into the ground. That's why we need a system of water management. It is the only way that civilization can survive. As far back as eleven hundred the Pueblo Indians were irrigating their land. They were the first to develop a water system. The West is dry but great rivers flow through it. The Columbia, the Missouri, the Colorado. Rivers

so vast states were named after them. The Indians tame some of this surface water but for all the Indians' ingenuity they couldn't harness the skies. They tried with magic, ritual and faith. Today the modern water exchange, a system as complex as much a component of America's economy as the New York Stock Exchange. 7 .3 billion dollars worth of dams, reservoirs and engineering still has no solution to dry skies and drought. The future of water resources not only in the Southwestern United States but in all the United States and in all the world, is that existing uses of water are going to be disappearing, perhaps not obviously until there's a major drought. The best information we have for the future is the past.

Oh! This ponderosa pine is a kind of time machine. This life has spanned half of the entire history of our nation. And the weather of that century is recorded right here in its core. From these tree rings we can see the drought of the fifties and the dust bowl of the thirties. Seven dry years have brought the country to its knees. Are we better prepared today with people fighting for water in court and pollution diminishing our supplies and demand going up? The answer is no. If a major drought hits and not just a blip like the dust bowl, the price would be devastating. This is Chaco Canyon today, one of the centers of Indian civilization based on irrigation. It was already abandoned by the time the Spanish arrived in the 1540s. The delicate balance of the weather changed. Of 200

-year drought, scourge the land. That cycle could come again. We do have some options the Indians and homesteaders didn't. We can mine water. Nature over millions of years has formed reservoirs underground. The Okalala Aquifer alone contains enough water to have kept the farmers of six states west of the 100th meridian in business. Yeah, in 1948 we drilled our first irrigation well. Really we didn't drill it. It was a drill wire for no oil well. So we went and got 80 each pump and put in it and pumped a thousand gallons of money. So that first year there we farmed 100 acres with that well wire. And we farmed 1800 acres of dry land. And we made as much off 100 acres as we did off 1800 acres of dry land. So we decided that it was pretty good. So I suppose told our dad, let's drill some more wells. And that irrigation come just in time for us. And we was lucky enough we lived

down far enough in valley where there was water. Or we would probably wouldn't have been here today either. We'd been gone with rest of the homesteaders. But mining water like mining minerals is stripping the resource from the earth leaving it barren. Well with the lax laws or loopholes in the laws it's obvious that more wells will be drilled, more water will be taken out. And less of the natural groundwater flow will reach the streams. Like the uranium tailings piles, groundwater mining is a short term solution that will eventually become a long term process. That attitude will take us to dry rivers and dry springs. And people losing their water right. The Indians abandoned Chaco Canyon and moved east and south. For us there's no place to move. We cannot manage our resources on a short term basis anymore. If we continue to develop water as we have in the

past, particularly if we expect the federal government to give us a hand in the development of these water resources, we will face a situation at that time where water is expensive and where there may well be an apparent shortage. Western water is running on empty because the water exchange is at a standstill. While people debate the debts of the past are coming due. The disposal of uranium mill tailings is a western problem. 99 % of the uranium mill tailings are found in the Rocky Mountain States. If one were to try and estimate the cost of reclaiming those piles, a convenient figure might be $5 a ton. If you have 150 million times the total load of tailings in the state times $5, we're looking at three quarters of a billion dollars. The water exchange could go bankrupt because western water

is undervalued, while its real cost is rising. In this country, at all levels of government, we have been committed to providing water at the lowest cost possible. Paper water is another short term solution to long term problems. There's no doubt about it. Sometime down the line, we will have to pay for it. Meanwhile, the water exchange is printing water rights as fast as it can. This is the Plaves Electric Generating Station. It cost $319 million. It has never been fired because it was built with the expectation that paper water could be turned into the real thing. Political forces have operated to manufacture and perpetuate these mythological concepts and the laws that are based on these mythological concepts. Paper water, like bank credit, built the west. But too many planes

generating stations and the system will collapse. But developing based on cheap water was what the government had always planned to expand westward. So a water system was guaranteed to foster that development. In 1902, the Congress passed the Reclamation Act, which established the Bureau of Reclamation within the Department of the Interior. This was the federal agency responsible for developing irrigated agriculture on public land in the western part of the country. The nation paid the $7 .3 billion to build projects like the San Juan Chaman diversion that brings Colorado river water across the continental divided in New Mexico. It was that water that started the Amatsood to determine which water was native and which imported. But the Bureau and the federal bankroll were no free launch. The price was payment and kind. So if we look at grants in New Mexico, which was the home of

the Uranium boom and Uranium is one of the minerals that comes under that 1872 mining law, what we find is a large part of that industry was built on. Federal land claims for minerals over which the state, the forest service, the Bureau of Land Management, nobody had any control because the statutory right to stake the claim, enter and take the mineral is absolute. What raises real doubt about the system is that the experts themselves do not know what is going on underground. And it is the underground water that the west is counting on for growth. Yes, the people who control groundwater do control the economic development of the surface. Since we can't see groundwater, technology has been called in, adding to the confusion. The use of the computer

models be futils, the minds of those people who don't really understand what the models do, nor the assumptions upon which the models are based. Many of the assumptions on which the models are based, in many cases, have been fallacious. Modeling is the war games of hydrology, but a war is mounting over the accuracy of modeling itself. The model that was prepared of the Pauacchi Basin is a very good model, the one that George Pender and Glenn Hurrin of the USGS prepared is a very good model. And I think, according to their testimony, gave results that were believed to be quite accurate. Models are used extensively in legal disputes like New Mexico versus Amundt. So using models, or using this model, for projections, you're just compounding one mistake after another. In the introduction to his model, Hurrin says, to

model a Tsusuki aquifer system is beyond the present capabilities of modeling techniques. Then Hurrin went on to model the aquifer, and the results were used as evidence in the Amundt suit. Mathematics were used instead of reality. The reality on the ground, the reality of the geology, the whole fiber of the land was not considered by the mathematician. You may be giving out a lot of water rights without its paper water. You can say, I have a paper that has, that I own so many water rights, but if I drill a hole in its dry, it doesn't do me any good to have that paper. And again, it comes back to the reality of whether you've got water there, how much it is, and how it's related to the rock formations. A recent law school publication referred to modeling as the key resource management tool of the future.

Models are used to plan cities, distribute water rights, and build industrial projects like the Plains Electric Generating Station. In that lawsuit over water, two models were submitted. The Plains Electric Model showed 6 ,800 acre feet could be taken from the ground with no effect. The U .S. Attorney's Model showed that that pumping rate, in 17 years, the aquifer could be completely dried up. Both models use the same data and arrived at completely different conclusions. So we have now money that directs research, money that directs data gathering, and money that directs conclusions and the construction of models, and the kind of information that will be disseminated from the use of those models. And this kind of information is that which will encourage development. The condition of the Santa Fe

Basin is a good example. A lot of developers are betting millions that Santa Fe will double in size over the next few decades. I feel very comfortable that if one uses the hydrological data which can be developed now with new techniques and new technology, uses it wisely, you can manage a basin efficiently and avoid crises. The water coming in by recharge isn't great enough to offset the effects of this mining. The Santa Fe Basin is recharging. This general depletion of the water and mining in the water in the Santa Fe field is indicated and really shown dramatically on these charts. But the water table is going to go down and down and we're going to be mined out in just a few years. What will happen to Santa Fe if its local water dries up? Water will have to be

imported as it is in Tucson and Los Angeles. The reason powerful entities like cities are not likely to go dry is that they have big money to buy water. Money should not be the determining factor of where water is used. That there are more important things such as life in general, such as the well -being of a community, such as the continued use of land for agriculture for farming. Western water would not be running out empty of agriculture where sacrifice for cities and industry. Even in heavily urbanized California irrigation uses 85 % of the state's water in New Mexico, it is over 90%. But with innovative thinking the water exchange could be more flexible. If industry were allowed to invest in agricultural efficiency, agriculture could remain in business. Industry would have the water it needs for its industrial applications.

If the water exchange is to remain viable, we will have to stop issuing credit, either paper water or by deferring other debts, because they will come due in the future with interest. The tailings problem is really hot in terms of the impact on groundwater supplies and the possible fiscal impact on the state. We also have a regulatory problem. We now are engaged in argument about how well we should cover the tailings piles. All those problems either were raised or could have been raised when the initial activity began, but because people were so grateful to have some activity, they were brushed aside. The lures will take long to provide the firstの ばっかで Dave's River Home Laundry for 5 -2 hours. Well, my tools give me a good indication there is a big volume of water here. Hey, chatty thing, contact me. I'm here

on 400 feet. Hey, hey, contact me. Check it, check it, check it. Hey, check it, check it. Check it, check it, check it. Check it, check it. Check it, check it, check it. Yes, I'm from Kansas and grown up in Kansas. We never had any problems with water or even worried about where it came from. Hey, hey, hey, that's not a hey. I believe there's a lot of future in the Mexico if we can get the water. In fact, without water, we got nothing. Hey, well, we live in a valley where there's water on both ends of us roughly four or five miles in either direction. But we live right where there's no water. We counted up today. There's 14 to 16 dry wells. This is on the edge of a good location right here. Check it, check it, check it. Check it, check it. Check it, check it. Check it, check it, check it. You know, I was raised in this valley. We've always had good water and blue water valley. And then I was

out to see the day when anybody in this valley had to be taking bottled water because they couldn't get water from the ground. We were taught to not drink water so much that we were tough when we went with one drink of water all day to teach us survival. In case we ever found ourselves in a situation where we didn't have water, we could survive. And I can remember having to get up at two in the morning and use a flashlight and turn the water in and my galley would stay up all night long and make use of that water. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I mean, finally, water

development association is going to purchase this well, providing it to test out with sufficient amount of water. Now, I know I lived my whole life. The water situation has always been bad. As far as that goes, now we have more people living here now which has created a great many water problems. Well, if this well test is out, it will be Christmas in July. Hey,

hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey everyday. Yeah, right, every where there. Every where there sharing that suffering. Yeah, right. Yeah, right .meter here. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey bring some water. Hey, You