A chart drawn by Johnathan Overpeck.

Day after day, Artlab organizers put brilliant, passionate people who are at the forefront of climate change research and activism in front of us. Scientists, activists and artists nudged together again.

Meeting with Johnathan Overpeck and Gregg Garfin, Institute of the Environment, University of Arizona.

In a weeks time, we hurtled from one remarkable destination to another: Biosphere 2 in all it’s magnificently manufactured glory, a sci-fi-esque experiment from the 90s that has become an international leader in climate change research, the Ceunca los Ojos project nestled in the Arizona mountains and hosted graciously by Valer Austin, across the border to Mexico with Valer to view the rest of Cuenca los Ojos’ incredible work revitalizing the ravaged landscape and restoring the water table, all the while fueled by Phillipe’s incredible cuisine.  This journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth format created a powerful camaraderie amongst the artists, our hosts and the scientists/activists/presenters, a camaraderie that still resonates or me today.

What this group eventually became had a direct bearing on the nature and intensity of the experiences I had on this trip. In the beginning, I was curious what sort of group dynamic would emerge among the assembled artists. I have found that, in short-term projects like this, groups can easily fly apart or polarize under the pressure of intense travel and information overload.  I’m happy to say that this group thrived on the pressure, and actually grew closer and more cohesive as the project went on.  And it was this camaraderie, the diversity, and the passion of the assembled group of artists and our hosts, coupled with our gifted presenters, that created for me a perfect storm of highly charged moments of learning and group absorption of knowledge that are still impacting me today; kudos to the organizers for their vision and tenacity in bringing together this amazing group.

Garfield Peak on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana.

With each landscape we entered I found myself returning to my reservation homeland in Montana, the dramatic badlands landscape that sustains me and drives my work. This place in southeastern Montana is my reference point for the rest of world and all other landscapes are run through its filter.  It resides at my core and at the core of my people the Tsistsistas Nation as we call ourselves (or Northern Cheyenne as we have been called).  My relatives in the past endured incredible hardships and even gave their lives so we would have this homeland

This place is My Forest not The Forest. It is a specific place on the earth that my people have known in great detail for centuries, not the generic space of bureaucratic fantasy referred to loosely as The Forest (I believe each of us has a My Forest, one with deep personal meaning). And, Indigenous scientists/practicioners have engaged (and continue to engage) their forests all across this continent and around the world and have done so for centuries, compiling data, recording observations, proving theories and handing that information on to subsequent generations.

My Forest is a place I have come to know as personally as a family member during the course of my life.  I have walked on it, crawled across it, ridden horseback over it, harvested plants and animals from it, and buried loved ones within it, just as did countless generations of my people.  My earliest memories are of digging roots, picking berries and hunting deer on this land with my family.  The outings, disguised as family picnics, were really ‘Tsistsistas University’ classes with my grandparents and other relatives and elders (the professors) teaching us the details of this place and our history on this land.  Their curriculum was handed on from centuries ago and was designed to be taught at any given moment during the day: all day, everyday.

My Forest, like so many others, is also an embattled space. My people have fought for years, and continue to fight, to keep coal development off our reservation. Hundreds of years ago, our prophet Sweet Medicine predicted that one day crazy people would come to the Tsistsistas people and ask us to dig into our homeland with them, and if we did so we would go crazy too and cease to exist as a people.  This prophecy has come true and today we know that one of the largest coal reserves in the world sits under our reservation and we have spent decades chasing away the crazy people: the coal companies and the federal and state government officials, who salivate over our rare and highly-prized, low-sulphur content, low-overburden coal.

It’s little help that our reservation is situated in an area the federal government has designated a ‘National Sacrifice Area,’ essentially all of eastern Montana.   A deceptively poetic phrase, in reality ‘National Sacrifice Area’ means that the restrictions on the extraction of minerals are greatly reduced.  Unfortunately eastern Montana is a place that fails to generate the tourism-based tax revenue of mountainous western Montana and so has been offered up for sacrifice to the strip miners shovel.

"Modern Warrior Series: National Sacrifice," Bently Spang, 2011, photos, hemp, misc. Collection Denver Art Museum

Detail: National Sacrifice, Bently Spang, 2011.

Now strip mining or surface mining, which devastates the top 100 feet of the earth, is at our doorstep just outside the boundaries of my homeland.  And though we are a sovereign nation and our homeland is not subject to the ‘National Sacrifice’ mandate, the earth outside our doorstep is subject to the mandate and threats of coal development and it’s crushing physical and social toll loom large on our horizon.  It’s presence just off the rez has also eroded our resolve to deny it access to our land, as is evidenced by a referendum vote in 2006 in my community that, for the first time ever, approved conducting a feasibility study concerning whether or not to pursue coal development; a clear shift in sentiment as all previous referendum votes coal development were soundly defeated. As I speak today, my nation’s leadership is in negotiations with 5 coal companies and the plot continues to thicken.  In response to this newly emboldened threat of coal development, in 2011 I created a sculptural work that responds directly to this issue which I titled National Sacrifice. It was commissioned by, and is in the collection of, the Denver Art Museum. It calls attention to this issue, as well as to the incredible National Sacrifice my relatives in the past made so that future generations would have a homeland: a place where we could keep our people and our culture alive.

Every landscape we encountered during Artlab held echoes of my homeland. The cacti around Biosphere 2 were relatives of the prickly pear cactus on our land. I saw a nearly exact duplicate of the man sage plant my people use but it had no sage smell (curious…). The cedar varieties were similar but somewhat more varied. I discovered a close cousin to the plant we call Old Man Whiskers near Valer’s place and the ponderosa pine tree that covers our land, a close cousin of it stood like a group of old friends up the creek from Valer’s place. These, and many others, are plants we use in several ways in my community: as medicine, as food, and in the context of ceremony. Their uses were discovered by Indigenous scientists/practitioners and have been handed on through many generations of Tsistsistas up to today.  When I go to other people’s forests I look for these plants, they give me a measure of comfort. They also remind me how intertwined and interdependent our ecosystems are and how, were it necessary, I could survive in just about any landscape.

I was gratified to see threads connecting my homeland to the Artlab landscapes and to realize that the complexity of I and my people’s experience with place, (both positive and negative) was mirrored in these landscapes.  Each place we visited we were shown the layers of interaction there, the spectrum of human activity on that land—from the complete and utter decimation and exploitation of place to the complete nurturing of it.  I saw that the passionate and gifted scientists and activists who presented their life’s work to us, though often differing in methodology and intent from my people, had the same level of curiosity and hunger for knowledge as the Indigenous scientist/practitioner had in the past and does have today about the natural world.  Most importantly, I saw that, across the board, concern for the welfare of the earth was strong among the scientists and activists we met, so strong that people have devoted their lives to this end just as we have for centuries in the Native community.  These realizations provided me with fresh insights into the scientific world and helped dispel my own misconceptions about that realm.  They would also help temper the challenging moments of my Artlab experience.

As a Native person moving through the Artlab experience, wonderful though it was, inevitably difficult cultural issues arose for me. These are issues that are deeply imbedded in the land for me and my people and that arise from the countless layers of human interaction there, both good and bad.  They are part of the history of this land yet are not often discussed at any length. I bring them up here not to reopen wounds or assign blame, but rather to foster a realistic,  frank and ultimately beneficial discussion about the nature of place which includes an unflinching look at the past and present.  Fearless discussions like this will not only help foster resolution of these difficult issues for both sides, a resolution that is long overdue, but it can also build trust and provide the strongest possible framework for change.  And, only through such fearless discussions can we be assured that the best people and best possible solutions to climate change, and other issues of place, are reached.  Certainly, in order to involve the Indigenous scientist/practitioner in finding solutions to climate change, which I believe is a crucial missing piece within the climate change efforts, this frank discussion must take place.

Proposed border fence between Mexico and the US.

And while I am eternally grateful to the scientists for so selflessly sharing their life’s work with us during Artlab, I struggled with a cultural bias that is deeply ingrained in me and countless other Native people with regards to science. It is bias born out of a legacy of extremely difficult  interactions—both older and more recent—between Native peoples and scientists It is a harsh historical reality that, unfortunately, resulted in genocidal acts towards my people in the name of science in the past (cranial studies and human remains,  see here, [note the issues of NAGPRA and the border fence with Mexico]) , and much less severe but still unethical acts (biocolonialism, molecular colonialism, etc., see here ) that continue today.   To be sure, the genocide of the past is, thankfully, a thing of the past, however the residue remains and new issues arise regularly.  Today, both sides are working to rectify this situation, yet the challenges clearly remain (see here).  And though this conflicted history had no direct correlation to any part of my Artlab experience, it is an undeniable, unresolved and intextricable part of my experience as a Native person.

The Native communities’ difficulties with the scientific community are, unfortunately, among the core elements that comprise the historical trauma/grief (see here) that has led to many of the unhealthy social issues we are dealing with in our communities today. The extreme hardships—genocide, broken treaties, boarding schools, etc.—Native peoples endured in the not so distant past in this country were unprecedented in Native history, therefore few cultural mechanisms were in place at the time of they occurred (ceremonies, etc.) to resolve them.  With no means of resolution, the grief and trauma of these atrocities were handed on generationally to this day. Today, we are working hard to resolve this historical trauma/grief in our communities, drawing from the inherent flexibility of our cultural structures, the intellectual power of our cultural information, and the tenacity of our people to devise new strategies for survival.  One example of this is the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) mentioned in one of the links above, an act that one of my elders the late Bill Tallbull, Sr., among other brilliant Native leaders, was instrumental in passing.  This act requires that museums who receive federal funding work with tribes to  return to them human remains, sacred objects, and personal objects in their collections (see here).

As I mentioned earlier, my Artlab experience helped temper my cultural bias with regards to science.  It helped me to understand that it is possible to bridge this chasm that exists between science and the Native community, but that it will take a concerted effort on both sides of the divide and a consistent dialogue between the two camps. Artlab provided me with unique and extremely valuable insights into the scientific community, both intellectually and on a human level.  Sitting across the table from brilliant scientists and being given access to their significant spaces, being immersed in a transformed landscape with the tireless lady who helped foster that transformation, these experiences reminded me that there is a deep level of concern and compassion fueling the climate change movement today.  It also gave me the opportunity to raise awareness of the centuries old existence of the Indigenous scientist/practitioner to the scientific and activist community, helping them to see the need for collaboration between the two groups. These are extremely rare opportunities for a Native person as we have rarely been included in a meaningful way as active participants in the climate change movement.  Artlab, and programs like it, then are providing critical linkages between historically polarized groups—scientist, artist, Indigenous scientist, cultural worker, etc.—which will ensure a more comprehensive and consequently more beneficial dialogue and more effective action with regards to climate change.

Long exposure night photo of Biosphere 2.

The immersive nature of the Artlab experience helped me to understand even clearer the critical role of the Indigenous scientist/practitioner in the current matrix of climate change activity.  These Native experts have always been, and continue to be, champions of protecting the environment.  I have always seen the need for more Native involvement on numerous scientific fronts, yet had never been able to see firsthand the potential ‘fit’ between the two camps until I was ‘dunked’ in these new environs. Once dunked in the Artlab experience, then, I was gratified to see some of this fit already taking place.

As an example, I was not surprised to discover that the trincheras or atajadizos (also called check dams, see here p. 71) used in parts of the Cuenca Los Ojos project were of Indigenous origins. These are forms used for centuries by Indigenous peoples to sustain their way of life in a challenging landscape.  Kudos to Cuenca Los Ojos for adopting their use and not wasting valuable time re-inventing the wheel.  Just as this ancient technology is working today, so too do living Native peoples hold significant knowledge that could be extremely beneficial to understanding the earth.  Combine this knowledge with the scientific communities studies, the expression of artists, and the efforts of activist groups and the potential is unmeasurable.

To be sure, there are many pressing issues in the Native community that are a higher priority than climate change: historical trauma, issues of sovereignty, teen suicide, to name but a few.  The simple truth is, as Native people, we have always dealt with climate change issues: it is part and parcel of who we are. I am not a medicine person and so will not discuss details of ceremony, except to say that the earth and it’s well being are woven into our ceremonies and we renew the earth in this way, each and every year, for all human beings. Respect for the earth is also woven into the everyday protocols that govern our actions as individuals and we are taught to harvest from the earth in a balanced way. We will continue our climate change work irregardless, however that being said, the potential of combining western scientific and Native approaches toward a multi-pronged effort is an exciting prospect.

The Artlab experience continues to resonate in me and several possibilities for an artwork are rising to the surface.  I have been compiling some of the extensive video footage I shot during the project into a possible multi-channel video installation.  Also, I was recently invited to participate as a presenter and panelist at a Native climate change symposium called Echoes of the Earth,( http://buffalosfire.com/echoes-of-the-earth-indigenous-perspectives-on-art-and-climate-change-conference-in-bozeman-april-5-6/) and I will be presenting some of what occurred during the Artlab trip at this symposium.

As I mentioned to the scientists at Biosphere 2, I see our role as artists in this project as translators, passing on our version of what we have gleaned from their generously accessible presentations in our own visual language to our particular audiences.

Valer showing our group a toad that returned to the reclaimed land at the Coronado Ranch in Mexico.

As such, I work to devise the best possible translation of this experience to present to my Native community and the larger community as well.  I also am interested in continuing the dialogue around possible Indigenous and western collaborations in curbing climate change.  I applaud the organizers for their extraordinary efforts in bringing this project together and many thanks for including me as part of such a powerful group of artists.

Final thoughts.  Still visible in my mind’s eye: Breathtaking—riding in John’s chevy van, an impossibly gorgeous sunset chasing us and Neil Young back from Mexico to Valer’s place; Unsettling—a hundred miles inside Arizona nowhere near a national border, the way-too-friendly, fresh-faced border patrol agent way-too-nicely interrogating us, “have a terrific day!” he said as we drove away; Exhilarating—almost dark, our guide, Jane and I race the cockroaches out of Biosphere 2, suddenly the lights shut down for the evening and it’s pitch black for a few seconds until my headlamp kicks in; Triumphant—1 o’clock in the morning, pitch black, finally seeing Jupiter and it’s moons through the telescope at Valer’s and me, Melo, David and his wife cheering and dancing around like kids in the middle of a horse pasture.

The artists represent an international cross section of various disciplines including digital media, mixed media sculpture, performance, installation, photography, painting and film. Fritz Buehner (New York-Boston), Eduardo “Pincho” Casanova Arosteguy (Montevideo, Uruguay), Melo Dominguez (Los Angeles-Tucson), Heather Green (Tucson), Jane Marsching (Boston), Macarena Montañez (Montevideo, Uruguay), and Bently Spang (Montana). All have been working in the field of environmental art.

As Art Lab Creative Director, I coordinated with Biosphere 2 scientists Joost van Haren, Kolby Jardine, Greg A. Barron-Gafford and Sujith Ravi to facilitate interaction with the artists. On the first day of their three-day visit, the B2 scientists were invited to join the artists for an informal discussion about art and science interface over breakfast, lunch and dinner, prepared by Phillippe Waterinckx, founder of Tucson Community Supported Agriculture.

On day four, Art Lab Technical Director John Newman drove the artists to the Institute of the Environment where they met with Jonathan Overpeck, Co-Director, Institute of the Environment, and Gregg Garfin, Deputy Director for Science Translation & Outreach before proceeding to Coronado Ranch and Cuenca Los Ojos Ranch, located on the Mexican side of the border.

Under the direction of Valer Austin, the artists spent three days touring the ranch where they learned its history and of her extensive efforts to re-establish plant life and animal migration. An impressive system of gabions promoting water retention, essential to restoring the land, has been built throughout the ranch.

The group was joined by Diana Hadley, Associate Curator, Arizona State Museum, and Yar Petryszyn, Assistant Curator of Mammals at the University of Arizona at Cuenca Los Ojos where they led discussions on animal migration, drought and ranching in Southern Arizona. They artists also learned the history of the San Pedro River, the last significant free-flowing river in the region, considered to be of paramount ecological and environmental importance, particularly to avian migration.

“I sincerely applaud the organizers for bringing together such a diverse, wonderful group of people,” said Bently Spang, a Northern Cheyenne artist who recently had an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. “I truly feel that we created a bond between the group of artists and with the scientists and environmentalists that will endure beyond the parameters of this project.”

A festive gathering of the participants was held at the Tucson home of Cathrene Morton marking the close of the busy week. The artists then returned to their studios to assimilate their experience and produce a work of art for Art Lab. The works will be posted on the Rillito River Project website at www.RillitoRiverProject.org.

My experience being part of the Rillito River Project was an amazing one. Originally from Los Angeles and now a Tucson resident, The Rillito River Project exposed me to a lot of valuable information about the environment and inspired me to learn more. Our experience began at Biosphere #2. We spoke to many different scientists about their work and our group was given a tour of the biosphere. The thing about the Biosphere is that you have to think of it as a living thing you are able to walk through and semi control. It’s a very cool experiment.

After our 4 days at the Biosphere we headed down to Cuenca Los Ojos in the Chiricahua Mountains. We stayed at the Coronado Ranch, an amazing place. Valer Austin has many acres of land both on the U.S. and Mexican side of the border. She invited us to see what she has done to raise the water table and reestablish native grasses on her land by building simple rock dams called gabions. We also had a chance to see how the border not only keeps people from their natural migration but also keeps animals from their natural migration. Being on the Coronado Ranch and meeting with Valer was a very inspiring experience. We had the opportunity to see what one person can do to make a huge change for the better.

I learned a lot from this experience. With this new knowledge I would like to use my skills as an artist to share it with others. I feel that if people knew more about how climate change is effecting our environment they would be willing to make the necessary changes. The first project I have in mind is to create a painting of the Mexican Free Tail bat. It lives in Tucson six months out of the year and helps our local farmers control the bug population. It also eats mosquitoes and is a delight to have as a summer resident. I would then love to make my painting into a large-scale mural that the people of Tucson can appreciate and learn from. This is the project I would like to do as a direct result of my Rillito River Project, Art Lab, experience.

Its hard to make artwork in the face of these questions.  Complex, abstract reams of undifferentiated data about the future lack a felt reality.  The timescales are long and the sweep of effects broad, but it is in looking at the shorter timescales and local experiences that the abstract becomes real.  Those local discussions were riveting and even hopeful, whether learning of the work of how to fight the disastrous effects of the invasive species Buffel Grass as it spreads rapidly through Tucson and surrounding areas, so clearly shown by Lindy A. Brigham, Executive Director of the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center, or Valer Austin’s determined remediation of desertified land to restore biodiversity in the Chihuahuan Desert on her ranch Cuenca Los Ojos.

The Art Lab Biosphere project provided an incredible, rich, and surprising experience for discovering the key questions around climate change in the Southwest, challenges in working across the studio and the laboratory, and the importance of dialog and connectivity in research and community.    My project, Avian Field Stations, has a new research focus: grasslands birds in the Cuenca Los Ojos area.  I look forward to returning to Tucson and the Chihuahuan desert in the early summer to conduct field research, develop alliances with researchers, and test prototype works.

Scientist Yoost Van Haren led us on an enthusiastic and insightful tour inside the biosphere, where we learned about many experiments that aim to study these problems in the desert and others ecosystems beyond. Inside B2 I found the powerful loud fans unsettling, but interesting—the fans are placed throughout B2 in order to aid the trees—which must be lifted up with harnesses as there’s not enough natural wind to develop the strength to support their own weight. It made me think of the lack of native sounds in B2 as well. What happens to a tree without participatory insects and birds or even other species? Aside from the lack of physical wind, what happens to ecosystems with a lack of auditory phenomena? I thought of installing speakers inside the Biosphere with recordings of autochthonous sounds to see if it would be possible to measure any changes over time.

During the second half of ART LAB we were guests of Valer Austin at lovely El Coronado Ranch where we saw first hand how it is possible to restore landscapes that have been scarred with over grazing and poor management, ending the week with a hopeful and inspiring picture. The first afternoon and evening we gathered around the patio with biologist Yar Petryszyn to study a collection of mammal skulls and learn about bats. While seated in a circle passing around skulls a number of honeybees kept aggressively buzzing around and landing on me, making me feel a bit wary. Having kept bees for a season I was surprised by my unease around them. “They’re just honeybees! Why so anxious?” I asked myself. The next day along our walks studying gabbiones and trincheras, Valer stopped to show us a few native pollinator plants that were beginning to take seed and described the importance of disseminating information about planting and preserving seeds on both sides of the border. She impressed upon us the variety of pollinators, pollinator plants and seed dispersal methods, and reported that on her land alone there are estimates of 450 native bee species—quite a number indeed!

Valer showing us seed pod

By the end of our stay at the ranch I felt inspired to assist Valer in getting the word out about these pollinators and plants. But I also felt in awe of the sheer numbers of native bees. I remembered I read somewhere an estimate that the Sonoran Desert has over 1,000 species of native bees, making it one of the most diverse bee population in the world. Back home in Tucson, I decided to meet with a few native bee experts to learn more about native bees. UofA insect behavior researcher Jennifer Jandt and native bee researcher and coordinator of Pollinator Partnership Stephen Buchmann confirmed what I remembered and informed me that the largest threat to native bees is not lack of pollen or plants due to grazing or invasive species, but competition from—HONEY BEES! This surprised me and made me remember those pestering bees back at the ranch. My plan now is to create an installation about native bees that will include a bi-lingual take-away pamphlet about native pollinators and their plants that Valer can use apart from my project.

Seed Pod at El Coronado Ranch

Stephen Buchmann's native bee collection

When I think about how long scientists have been searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, I see in my mind’s eye the earth, a tiny, but brilliant blue speck sheilded by its fragile atmosphere against the vast fullness of  space as the rarest of things.

The world population is now 7 billion and the competition for resources among all living things fierce.

My personhood will always make me the center of my universe.  The visit to Art Lab, to Biosphere 2, the Chiricahua Mountains, and Sonora desert, with an international group of artists to meet extraordinary people dedicated to revitalising a land degraded through mismanagement was inspiring. Energized at home I can imagine that what may seem incommensurable can be rethought.

To be continued…

Coming soon !

“To” from Shelia Rocha on Vimeo.

The dance she performs is a dance done by the maidens along the shore of the the water.  It is an old one that is done in the presence of the single young men of her people.  Tatiana’s dance is placed in juxtaposition with the environment of the desert and the words of the Dine’ actors/dancers who come from the arid climate of Arizona where water is prized since it is often times scarce.

Water as celebration, as sustenance, as a dying relative in this 21st century is honored as an ancient being comprised of pure spirit in this performance piece that engages the voice, movement and music of Native people who currently reside in Tucson, Arizona.

I pulled down the receiver and put the phone to my ear.

“Hell-lo”? I said.

“Mr. Cauthorn is an S.O.B.,” was the reply, and the connection went dead.

I was too young to know what those initials actually meant, but I was acutely aware of the hostility on the other end of the line and the cowardly shame the crank caller may have felt after delivering their nasty payload to a child.

I was also aware that my father, Robert Cauthorn, wasn’t too popular at that time. A city council member, he had recently had contributed to a resolution that increased the water rates for people living in the foothills of Tucson. Many cities in the Southwest such as Tucson faced challenges not only in terms of water supply, but also the logistics of transporting water to higher elevations. This feat required extra energy and engineering, and the Tucson City Council members decided that this challenge warranted charging higher water prices to those living in the foothills.

But in general, residents in the foothills tended to be more affluent, and therefore more formidable when it came to protesting council measures that they didn’t like. The protesters weren’t even interested in arguing the point, they simply wanted to kick my dad and several other council members out of office. A man by the name of Fitzgerald led the whole, tea party-esque movement with the help of a connected lawyer. Fitzgerald (I forget his first name) was known as “The Color TV King” and sold them on the corner of Grant and Campbell avenue. I believe the sign is still there, as it may now be registered as some sort of landmark.

The Color TV King was in fact successful in throwing my dad out of office via a council recall. The council members scattered to the four winds. My family ended up in Florida very soon after. This ended being a positive development, as my dad was tired of getting a near poverty level salary while enduring the protests of people who either didn’t understand the rationale behind the water rate increase, or just didn’t care. To this day, Tucson foothills residents pay the same for their water as those that live down in the city. It basically amounts to taxpayer subsidized water delivery.

That bitter episode marked my first encounter with water supply issues in the Southwest. But that was just the beginning. A different type of water issue was rumbling on the horizon. It was brought on by population increases that were putting an increasing strain on the limited underground water supply. Golfing resorts like La Paloma and Canyon Ranch sprouted up and compounded the problem, as golf courses require tremendous amounts of water to be maintained.

These issues weren’t limited to Tucson. Las Vegas residents fought with California farmers for rights to the Colorado river. Farmers needed the river to water the Imperial Valley, some of the most fertile land on earth. Las Vegas needed the water to enable continued city growth. These were both perfectly good reasons to tap water from the river, but it didn’t matter how good the reasons were. There was only so much river. And nowadays if you travel to where the Colorado river naturally flows into the Gulf of California, you’ll find only dry sand. Fish species such as the Colorado Pikeminnow, one of largest species of carp in North America, are now effectively extinct in Arizona, Mexico and Nevada, and only found in the Colorado River headwaters in the state that gives the once mighty river its name. And in water starved Texas, tense negotiations continue with its northern, water rich neighbor Oklahoma. Texas may have oil, but you can’t drink it.

Please forgive the didactic tone for a moment. The term carrying capacity of a given environment is roughly defined as the amount of sustainable life it can support. How much food is available? How much water ? These variables have dictated where populations – both animal and human – have been able to settle in the past. But modern technology and engineering can now enable us to proliferate in areas where natural circumstances would previously never allow, effectively cheating the limitations of carrying capacities. We can turn deserts into golf courses, bring green Eastern style grass lawns to formerly rocky front yards, and pipe more water to new families who move to desert climates. But the water cost of doing this is huge, and it’s a game of diminishing returns. Now it’s no longer a matter of simply raising the water rates. It is getting to the point where cities like Tucson are in danger of running out of local water completely. Have we ever documented a situation where a large town simply runs dry? I don’t know, and certainly don’t know the solution beyond common sense conservation.

I also suspect that as Tucson’s water table drops, particulates and contaminants become less diluted and more noticeable, perhaps even dangerous. Polychlorinated Biphenyls, or PCBs, have been found at certain well sites in Tucson. I now live in Chicago, and am used to drinking the fairly good water that comes from Lake Michigan. I recently travelled to Tucson to visit my parents. My friend Jeff gave me a ride from the airport. We stopped and had lunch at a wonderful Mexican restaurant on 4th avenue. But when I took a drink of the water, it tasted like jet fuel. “What are you talking about?” my friend Jeff responded. “The water tastes fine.” And he proceeded to gulp down half a glass, looking at me like I was a lunatic. “You look so worried,” Jeff said.

But why should I be worried, I thought. All we have to do is negotiate with San Diego to construct a desalinization plant, and then run 400 miles of pipeline from the Pacifc to Arizona. We can pass on the gargantuan energy cost of desalinating and transporting this water to the Arizona taxpayers. They’ll understand, because the water must flow. Man – aren’t I a chip off the old block ?