The next round with the foreigners is now scheduled:
Thursday, November 12, at 1:15 pm
Socorro County Courthouse
*
We'll have more up about the issue at hand -
the who-what-why - but basically it's a legal strategy
by the enemy: trying get an earlier decision
that ruled in the good guys' favor
to be set aside. It's legal wrangling. This is NOT a hearing on their latest application.
More coming.
* GOOD NEWS! Some members of the New Mexico Legislature's Interim Committee on Water and Natural Resources have all made recent statements questioning or outright opposing the WATER GRAB. Eileen Dodds of the Water Coalition got some terrific information at their Aug 31-Sept 1 meeting. We'll have some quotes and more in our next posting.
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Drought Fears Subside - LLC Shuts Up!
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Compare the above to the situation
in July of 2013 - 27 months ago.
.
.
At this point in 2013, and for months and
months following, the foreigners kept up the
salesman's spiel that only NEW sources of
water would save us from the drought,
such as, or most especially, the aquifer they want to tap, the San Augustin Plains aquifer.
Our only hope was to welcome the
thieves and end up buying what was ours
to begin with. What bullshit.
There were other new sources of water,
and so we tapped into these other "reserves"
one might say. Keep the devil out of here.
.
.
They've now shut their traps about drought. We pray further that they'll eventually shut up about all of it, and stay in (or go back to) their homelands, where fraud, theft, and lying must be typical national pastimes. At least among the high and mighty.... at least (or especially) when it involves Americans. It certainly appears as such.
And here's an article from the Socorro Defensor Chieftain:
Supreme Court side-steps water grab issue
by John Larson | November 6, 2014 | Filed under: News
The New Mexico Supreme Court last week chose not to
consider
a petition filed by Ray and Carol Pittman of Datil to
order the Office
of the State Engineer to dismiss an application
from San Augustin Plains
Ranch LLC.
As outlined in its application, the company’s plan is to
pump
54,000 acre-feet of water per year from the San Agustin
aquifer and
transfer it by pipeline to sell to communities as far
north as Rio
Rancho.
The Pittmans had asked the Supreme Court to determine
whether public water shall remain open to appropriation for
beneficial
use or whether public water can be monopolized by
speculators, not for
their own use, but for profitable sales in
future markets.
The petition for the writ of mandamus was filed by New
Mexico
Environmental Law Center attorney Bruce Frederick for the Pittmans on Sept. 22.
In the petition, the Pittmans argue that a second
application filed by the company this summer is “identical in all
material respects” to its original application filed in 2007, which was denied by the state engineer.
Frederick said the court may have rejected it because of a
separation of powers issue. “We’re still in limbo,” Frederick said. “The application is still sitting there in the state engineer’s office.” Frederick said the state engineer must reject the 2014
application for the same legal reasons that he denied the 2007 application.
Carol Pittman said she and her husband still have recourse. “We are going to back to the court of Judge Reynolds, who
has
already denied the current application, and ask him to enforce it,”
Carol Pittman said. “We won’t give up until we absolutely have to.”
.
.
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The drought monitor is important for numerous
reasons. But in the San Augustin case it's helpful if
the foreigners can't use the drought to promote their
cause. It's scare tactics - not unusual for mafia types.
*
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A Storm Across the Valley, Tim Cox
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Long Range Precipitation/Drought Outlook The official NOAA Climate Prediction Center outlook for New Mexico precipitation during November 2014 favors above normal precipitation over much of the state. The outlook from November through January 20 also leans toward better chances of above normal precipitation, especially across southern New Mexico.
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1 Month Precipitation CPC Outlooks
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3 Month Precipitation CPC Outlooks
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ON THE RIO GRANDE - SAN ILDEFONSO, 1905, Edward S. Curtis
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Below is
an animation of the weekly U.S. Drought monitor for
2014 (through early
October) across the United States. Note
how the drought worsens over New
Mexico through most of
May before improving from late May through this
summer.
.
.
.
11/16 The Sangre de Cristo Range in Colorado and New Mexico,
as well as the San Juan Mountains further west, all got their first major blast of winter this week.
The Rio Grande snowpack is off to a good start.
.
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STOP THE WATER GRAB!
“There can never be any real freedom on earth
as long as people try to exert ownership over
the natural resources of the world.” Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Above - The Truchas Peaks in northern New Mexico, part
of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountain Range.
Insert - The village cemetery at Truchas, NM . These mountains, running from north of Santa Fe across the state line into Colorado, are a major source of runoff for the Rio Grande.
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From the Las Cruces Sun-News
Mediocre snowpack shapes up in Rio Grande, expert says
Irrigators hopeful winter will bring more water to district
Las Cruces - After what Doña Ana County irrigators said was a mediocre start to the winter, snowpack levels in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico will be closely watched in the first quarter of 2014.
That's after a historic low irrigation year in 2013.
Phil King, water engineer for the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, said the season is shaping up better than a year ago, "which isn't saying much," because last year was a record low irrigation year. But neither is the forecast stellar.
"It's certainly not going to be a good one," he said. "It won't be anything close to a full supply."
A federal snowpack report Monday showed that the Upper Rio Grande Basin -- a key water source for the Rio Grande -- sat at about 90 percent of normal for this point in the season.
And while that might seem positive, experts said the figure is on a downward trend.
After the season began Oct. 1, there was decent snowfall in the watershed, experts said. But that changed.
"It was actually up over 100 percent (of normal) through early December, but then it quit snowing," King said.
Wayne Sleep, hydrologic technician for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, said the snowfall "pretty well shut down in December."
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