ABQjournal: Future Water Is More Valuable Than Gas Royalties By Stephen Capra, Executive Director, N.M. Wilderness Alliance
Oceans of water, enough to last hundreds of years are stored in this huge aquifer…. The economics of protecting a water resource that can sustain several communities and towns for a hundred or more years far outweighs the short term gain from gas royalties.
Think back to the first time you heard about Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico. What descriptions do you remember hearing? I recall “remote, stark beauty.” What exactly is the dollar value of “remote, stark beauty”? We better figure that out quickly, because you can’t save anything you can’t put a dollar value on.
In those early discussions of the inevitable damage drilling will undeniably cause (count roads in that), one of the last things mentioned was water. Even then, I thought, uh oh.
Now water is the only argument left because we can’t assign a dollar value to leaving “remote, stark beauty” untouched, and I am certain we will regret that.
Today, Stephen Capra, perhaps a reasonable environmentalist, hands developers the perfect argument for a new Rio Rancho in the middle of nowhere. He even uses the exact words developers used about Albuquerque: that aquifer will sustain unbridled growth “for a hundred years or more.” We heard that nonsense constantly for decades right up until the moment it was proven categorically false. D’oh.
If I were a greedy profiteer looking to make money off of Otero, I’d say, OK, so we won’t drill — let’s build thousands of houses! After all, there is an endless supply of water there and people will love to have homes in all that “remote, stark beauty.” That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? mjh
PS: Capra is President of the Wilderness Alliance, of which that not-so-dangerous radical, Dave Foreman, is a member. I look forward to Jim Scarantino’s reaction (see yesterday’s entry). Full Disclosure Fetishists will be aroused to learn I’ve contributed to WA. I’m really not a member of anything, and I don’t throw money around. However, I do appreciate the hard work of reasonable people who try to protect land from exploitation and ruin. Sadly, money is all that matters to capitalist zombies, for whom “remote, stark beauty” is a marketing phrase.