SENATOR HEINRICH COMES THROUGH!

So, after an ongoing fight of ten years+, one of the New Mexico delegation "steps up" as they say....good for Senator Marty!....Tommy Udall's probably daydreaming about how much money he could make helping the foreigners....just because he's a liberal and this is really an environmental and basic justice issue doesn't mean that he'll help the cause necessarily....rich liberals are just as bad as the flip side of the coin, rich conservatives....when these people smell more cash at the trough there's no bets on who's in your corner.... Here's the good Senator's op-ed piece from last Thursday's Socorro Defensor Chieftain.
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  http://www.dchieftain.com/opinion/columns/water-grab-on-the-plains-of-san-agustin/article_d329e5c8-32a6-11e8-b246-fbbb7f7947fc.html

BATTLE WON! LOSERS LOOK BAD ON ALL FRONTS

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Velanie Tafoya at The Golden Spur Saloon

holds up the best headline of the season!!!

Here's the article:

http://www.dchieftain.com/news/judge-stands-by-ruling-on-water-use/article_f52cfcc4-8997-11e5-bd41-8bb07dfd7022.html

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LAW #7 of the
 ELEVEN LAWS OF WATER
 Fight to free our water.
 Fight to keep our water pure,
 and fight to keep water reserves 
free and open to all.
 Never allow natural arsenals of water
 to be privatized.
Suzy Kassem,  Rise Up and Salute the Sun:
The Writings of Suzy Kassem 

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"Sacred Waters" by E.I. Couse

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TURN YOUR RADIO ON! COURT THURSDAY AT 1:15

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 The PSA above has been running a lot on
 Socorro FM since last Sunday morning.
Our sponsors for the airtime are:
Western Wholesale
Winston's Auto Service
The Golden Spur Saloon
Water Boy Transport
Man in the Maze Productions

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Dan Rufenacht won the $100 bill for the

BEST WATER THIEF at The Golden Spur Saloon's

Halloween Party.  Dan said he was trying to find

that perfect balance between a used car salesman

and a sleazy scumball member of some

"FAMILY" of foreign operators.

You done GOOD Dan!

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"Price hikes and water quality problems often follow on the heels of privatization. While governments may expect to lower debt and transfer the costs of infrastructure repair and maintenance via privatization, the willingness of private companies to make such investments depends on the profit stream. In fact, debt reduction, increased spending for upgrades and the companies’ guaranteed profit margins will ultimately be borne by citizens through higher bills. Privatization saddles consumers with the dual responsibilities of public debt reduction and corporate profitability, usually guaranteed by governments’ contracts.

Operating as a sanctioned monopoly, a private water company is able to exploit the lack of competition. Citizens have few avenues to voice dissatisfaction with broken promises. In fact, communities’ interests are often trampled and disregarded once public control is surrendered. Without transparency or accountability, water corporations are breeding grounds for bribery, kickbacks and other forms of corruption, many cases of which have been documented in the U.S. and abroad."

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Click on the water below to see the full article:
"The ABC's of Water Privatization"

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POLITICAL THINKING FROM SANTA FE & HALLOWEEN WEIRDNESS

Edited from a report by Carol Pittman

Eileen Dodds from the San Augustin Water

 Coalition attended the Aug 31-Sept 1 meeting

 of the Legislature's Interim Committee on

 Water and Natural Resources, and listened to

 some informal discussion about the

 WATER GRAB.

Here's her synopsis of what was said by some

of the members:
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Representative Bealquin "Bill" Gomez, District 34

(Dona Ana), said that he was not in favor of transferring 

"that much water and hurting the small communities."

  He further stated

"This transfer will likely impair existing water rights,

and I will not let it happen"  In a personal email message

to this writer Rep. Gomez reported that he had "read out

the section of the reasons the state engineer could use to

turn down a request to move water from one region to

another.  It states that if the change would harm the rights

of other people in the area it would be one of the main reasons

to turn down the request for transfer of water."
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Bill McCamley, who represents the 33rd District

(Dona Ana), stated that he wants to see subsidence studies

first.  State Engineer Blaine admitted that subsidence

would be a problem, but that no study was planned.
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Senator Cisco McSorley from Dist 16 (Bernalillo),

asked for the OSE to do a psychological impact study

of the effect on the citizens losing the water.  He pointed out

that there were multi-generational families ranching

the Plains, and that they had hopes of their children and

grandchildren continuing the tradition.

He is opposed to those families "losing their heritage."
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Senator Peter Wirth, Santa Fe, asked about states
that had legislation that put large transfers in the
hands of the legislators.
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And last, but not least, 

Representative Candy Ezzell, a rancher from

District 58 (Chavez) stated:

"I'll fight this transfer with every bone in my body."

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 A Note to Representative Ezzell: 

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 Our blog is sponsoring a SPECIAL PRIZE at

The Golden Spur Saloon's Halloween Party!

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 “The dead weren’t scary. 

It was the living you had to watch out for.” .

Eileen Wilks, Mortal Ties

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WE HAVE A DATE WITH THE DEVIL!

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The next round with the foreigners
 is now scheduled:

Thursday, November 12, at 1:15 pm

Socorro County Courthouse

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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 Southwest Colorado just got off to a

 good start for this year's Rio Grande snowpack.

Pray for Snow and get the skis out!

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AN OPEN LETTER TO SENATOR TOM UDALL (BACKGROUND)

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"Like so many New Mexicans, farming and ranching

are in my blood. My grandmother was born in

 Luna, New Mexico in 1893 and her family

 drove cattle through the mountains down

 to the railroad in Magdalena.

 Farming and ranching are part

 of our heritage and serve as a key economic

 engine in our state, accounting for more than

 $4 billion in our economy. 

More than 20,000 farms dot the

New Mexico map.

 I am committed to preserving the important

 role that the agricultural community plays in

 our state's identity and economy."

Senator Tom Udall

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As you can see from the Senator's statement

above, Tom Udall has roots and connections

to New Mexico's ranching community, and

that tie runs right through this country.

When the Senator speaks of his ancestors

driving cattle to Magdalena, he's speaking of

the Magdalena Trail - which runs right by

(or perhaps through) part of the

 Augustin Plains Ranch LLC,

 the proposed site of the WATER GRAB.

The cattle "Trail" became the "Driveway" in

1918, and was in use up until about 1970.

There's lots more info about the Trail on

the Bureau of Land Management website -

http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/fo/Socorro_Field_Office/features/magdalena_trail.html

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While the Water Grab is more of a state, rather
than federal, issue, there are definitely some

factors here that would be of interest to the

Senator, and there are ways in which he

could aid the cause.

Our letter to Senator Udall will be up shortly.
Editor's note, December 14:
The letter is UP and is here:
http://stopthewatergrab.blogspot.com/2013/12/dear-senator-udall.html

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WHY GOD MADE BUMPER STICKERS

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  Socorro County Commissioner Danny Monette
(and his Ford pickup)

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Danny Monette got involved with the issue seriously

after the fund-raiser for the San Augustin Water Coalition

held at The Golden Spur Saloon in Magdalena

last February, which he attended.  Since then

he's done a LOT of GOOD for the cause.

He's a politician in the best sense.

He's got his eye out for what's real, and what's bullshit,

and has actively been educating people about the

 WATER GRAB, and what it means in the big picture.

We caught Danny yesterday, by luck, and he gave

us some encouraging news about things.

Here's just a small byte of an interview

we had with him.

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Danny, what's happend on the county level?

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"What the county did - they came out as a "Protestant" now in

the legal fight against the Water Grab, and our county attorney

has a ranch over by Alamo, and he's personally against it.

There's a LOT of people totally against this.

I'd say 99.9%. "

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Well, you've gotten new credentials since we saw you last.

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"Yeah, I got put on the Executive Board of the

New Mexico Association of Counties, and I represent five

counties in the area.  And at the state conference in Clovis,

I was elected to serve on the national board of the

WESTERN INTERSTATE REGIONAL CONFERENCE,

which includes all of the Western states.

It's involved with policies and procedures regarding

 public lands coming out of Washington, and their impact,

 and issues of importance to the West in general.

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Ninety percent of the people on this deal

are ranchers or farmers,

and they ask me about the BUMPER STICKER,

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 and they want to know what it "represents."

And I explain to them what's going on out at the

San Augustin Plains, and they are 100%

in favor of stopping it.

I'm getting a LOT of support.

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I'M LOVIN' IT! 

I think it's great, because these people have values,

and they have long histories of agriculture in their

background, and they realize what these people,

the foreigners here, are tryng to do to us.
To our industry.
It's good!"

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More from our interview with Danny Monette to come.

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The VLA, Very Large Array, out on the Plains of San Augustin.

  It's operated by the NRAO, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory,

funded with taxdollars through the National Science Foundation.

The NRAO is also one of the many "Protestants" in the legal fight

 against the Modena Organization.

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WATER MARKETS

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"There is a very good reason that so many companies

are getting in on the water business.  As the world's

freshwater supply dwindles, the need to find new

sources rises, creating a brand-new market in a

sector where there was none before.  The brand-new

market has created a brand-new investment  opportunity,

and suddenly water has become a hot property on

the stock market.  There are at least a dozen major

water indexes as well as new exchange-traded funds

dealing exclusively in water.  As water analysts note,

water is hot not only because of the growing need

for clean water but because demand is never affected

by inflation, recession, interest rates or changing

tastes.  "Water is a growth driver for as long and far

as the eye can see," Deane Dray, water adviser for

Goldman Sachs, told the New York Times.

Lehman Brothers predicts that the number of

people served globally by investor-owned

water companies is expected to rise 500

percent in the next decade."

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Maude Barlow

BLUE COVENANT

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