Water - For What It's Worth

Colorado River - Glen Canyon - 1963

Spring has sprung; when an old hydrologist’s fancy turns to runoff and water supply.  We have a 70% snowpack and if it is anything like last year we can expect 35% of an  average runoff.  This is because of long and short term drought, climate change, decreased supply, increased demand and our inability to accurately model or manage groundwater and surface water conjunction.  No matter the snowpack, it mostly depends on the melt weather in May and June, unfortunately now in April too, but with only half of the reservoir carryover storage and groundwater surcharge we had last year, we are hosed.  No pun intended.

Water doesn’t flow downhill, it flows towards money, and we have money in Park City.  Most of our water is pumped from the Weber River, over Promontory and down to our faucets.  If that keeps happening, why should we worry?  Forty years ago when my mentor Fred Duberow suggested we get our future water from the Smith Morehouse ‘Rese-voie’ on the Weber River, we thought he was crazy, but he was a visionary like William Mulholland and Floyd Dominy, bringing water to the people. 

The Colorado River, which along with the Klamath River, is the poster child for western water and is showing the strain.  While it purportedly flows enough to supply 10 – 20 million acre-feet a year, it now sustains 3-5 million (an acre foot covers a football field one foot deep and is enough for 1-4 families depending on the family).  Lake Powell is 1/4 full and dropping like a stone and may be too low to make power later next year or control flows in the Grand Canyon soon after.  Lake Mead isn't much better.  Neither are Jordenelle, Deer Creek, Rockport or Echo reservoirs.  Yet we are still growing alfalfa and cows up high in the great white north, and cotton and rice down in the desert. 

But we don’t grow much alfalfa, wear much cotton or eat much rice in Park City so why should we care?  We have plenty of water, it is just going to the wrong uses, and we all pay for that to happen.  We are still considering the Lake Powell Pipeline (LPP) to send phantom Colorado water to St George, the worst water wasters in the west, and all of Utah will pay for it.  With inevitable delays, inflation, supply side issues and a pessimistic cost estimate it will cost 5-10 billion dollars, not 2-4.  If Saint George had to pay for it, they would never do it.  If we all had to pay the true cost and worth of water, we might be a little more conscientious and conservative. 

With push coming to shove, the State of Utah is taking $200 million of Federal Infrastructure money to buy meters for secondary water systems to monitor the rampant misuse.  'If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it,' a wise man once said.  And with agriculture using 80% of the water in the west, with much of it coming from groundwater, we are only beginning to monitor those systems.  Use it or lose it, but please don’t abuse it.

Lip service and baby steps are finally being taken to promote conservation, water banking and marketing where you can get paid out of a new $40 million State fund if you save, conserve, or dedicate your water to send to the dying drying Great Salt Lake.  Finally, rivers and lakes, fish and riparian ecosystems are getting the respect they deserve.  

The water laws are also being reinforced to assure that if and when it hits the fan, water will go to people first and agriculture and industry second.  With billions of dollars being spent on infrastructure with bad Priority Dates, such as the Central Utah Project or Lake Powell Pipeline; Priorities have more to do with water value than filing dates.  First in time does not necessarily mean first in line, anymore.

So don’t complain the next time it costs you $100 a month to keep your lawn brown.  Water is a priceless, social-welfare, natural resource and a public right, but it is also becoming a market-based capitalistic commodity to be bought and sold by the highest bidder for the best use, promoting conservation and wise use.  The Colorado River is the poster-boy and water is just the metaphor for how we treat all of our natural resources.  The environment, climate and natural resources are just the externalities of this market based economy.  Unfortunately we socialize the costs and capitalize the profits.  The tragedy of the masses is that we all slake our personal needs without much regard for the common good. 

Water is just the metaphor for how we mistreat all our natural resources.  The environment, climate and the underprivileged are just the unfortunate externalities of this new supply side, water economy.  As usual, we socialize the costs and capitalize the profits.  The Tragedy of the Commons is that we all slake our personal thirst without much regard for the public welfare.  It is time to manage this new trickle-down, water economy - including all of the externalities, with practical public benefit regulation, to promote wise use, conservation and the common good.  

Vail Post Mortem

 

Well, another ski season has come and gone.  This one had its challenges with below average snow, supply chain difficulties, and employment issues not to mention Covid, a weird economy, local traffic and tourist reluctance.  The results were lack of open terrain and closed lift access, reduced grooming efforts and overcrowding caused by the limited terrain and increased skier days.  Restaurants were restricted if not closed and the on -site amenities were anemic and undistinguished.  Consequentially I would rate this season uninspiring and insipid, at best.  Deer Valley did better but there was no buzz, vibe or there, there at PCMR.

But maybe its me.  After two years of Covid weirdness my heart was not in it.  After going up a few times after New Years , I could bot be bothered, even in the brilliant blue sunshine of January and February.  By March and April we had move on to spring time occupations and forgot about the icy bumps on the mountain under warm but steal grey skies.  The City put out a Sadness Survey and as I took it I realized that although I am not technically sad or mad about this, things are deteriorating and not necessarily getting better or more happy around here.  So it goes, all things must pass.

Obviously, skiing has changed over the years, getting locally more popular and crowded, feeling like a Visa commercial.  There are times now when I feared for my life skiing shoulder to shoulder with von-traversers or wild men schussing from the back seat with their hands down and their coats open.  Yahoo.  There is no courtesy or civility but it feels like dog eat dog out there and I can’t go fast enough to leave it all behind me anymore.  People are getting hit and diverted in bounds while ropes are being cut and people are skiing above and on top of you in the backcountry, in mass and not safely, one at a time.

We get a few 1-2 foot powder days these days but not the 3-4 foot ones from days gone by.  Even if you get up there at 8 am and find a place to park, you don’t get on the mountain until 10-11 and it is mysteriously skied out already by people with Fast Trax or Trophy Homes.  The climate has changed and the season is shorter and warmer on both ends.  It rains in Janualry, up to 10,000 feet.  We didn’t have appreciable snow this year for almost two months and things got a little hard and scrapy. 

Traffic clogs the resort entrances and exits with grid lock on 248 and 224 on big days.  The line to get off the freeway backs up to Jeremy Ranch and the side roads are packed or policed.  Parking is gone by 10 am, cutting down our flexibility for unscheduled or impulsive visits and it is hard to break or meet for coffee on the hill without reservations or repercussions.  Lift lines are Vailien in scale and bigger than ever, especially at pinch points and it sometimes takes hours to get off the mountains with lift and run closures, mechanical breakdown or moose jams.

Consequently, road trips were in order and places like Alta, Brighton, Powder Mountain, Sno-Basin, Sun Valley and Jackson seemed to be coping with it much better, not to mention the Ma and Pa places in Montana or Canada.  If they can do it then why can't we.  How did we miss the bus and how can we do better.  Perhaps it would help to return control of the resorts to locals who know how to run them and deal with local problems.  Or perhaps we should all find something better to do and move on, counting our blessings for the great years we have had and wishing those that remain good luck with what they have come to accept and appreciate.  

'Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.  They paved paradise and put up paid parking lots.'  Joni.

 

Mountain Meadows Massacre

I went out into the Snyderville Meadow the other day from my billion dollar house is Silver Springs, just to look up at the mountains and remember why we live here.  The day was unbelievably blue and the green and white mountain playground filled the foreground.  I walked on the perfectly groomed ski trail to the new ski track on the Osguthorpe farm and up to the County hockey pond at the Willow Creek Lake.  The only thing missing was outdoor yoga, soccer, frisbee, kids and Pickle Ball but that will start soon.  It was pretty nice.

It reminded me of 33 years ago when I built my little house here, on a song and a prayer, and had the entire meadow to myself.  I would go classic cross-country skiing in the meadow often, in untracked snow and sometime on a smooth tabletop of unbreakable crust that I could skate-ski on.   I would hike around in the summer in grass as tall as a bison’s belly.  It was a great place to be alone.  I had the place to myself. 

Over the years the meadow became choked with Russian Thistle and other foreign-exotic species during the summer but there were also indigenous turkey vultures drying their wings in the morning and foxes howling their ungodly mating screams at night.  Occasionally there would be a moose out there chasing the cows around or a heard of Elk or Deer browsing lazily on my landscape.  Those days are gone.  

Now there are hoards of Goats-for-Hire out there every August eating everything in sight and turning the meadow into a dust bowl or a goat-poop-soup quagmire when it rains, all in the name of weed control or fire suppression.  They spray the weeds adequately annually and this is a groundwater recharge zone where the grasses are green and have not burned in the 40 years I have been watching.  The meadow is a moist green sponge that slowly drains every summer to this groundwater discharge area.   If they must do this can't they move the goats faster or do it in September or October before the first snows.  

The Goat denuded landscape raises the local temperature of the meadow, the Sand Hill Cranes move north and the hummingbirds, crickets and lightning bugs are gone, not to mention other unintended consequences.  My dog doesn't even want to go out there.  I'm sure the County has looked into this Goat plan and there is some good intentions, science and economics involved, but it seems the cure is worse than the sickness, at least for those of us who live on the meadow.  

I lamented the slow entropy of the meadow experience over the years as Ranch Place and then Willow Creek were developed and my unending, wide open spaces became cloistered and confined.   Once an unsavory developer planned 400 units on 100 acres in the meadow and when we asked him about open space, he replied that every ¼ acre lot would have a front AND a back yard.  When asked about Wetland preservation he said they would build a pool and a pond.  The pond would be good for me. 

But the new developments graciously provided trails, open space and connectivity between the undeveloped areas, after a little arm twisting by the county.  Now there is a County maintained trail system that carries more than1000 people and dogs a day around the meadow and connects to trails from Park City to Round Valley, UOP, Kimball Junction and the rest of the 500 miles of trails around here.  Kids and dogs, horses and bikes, skis and sleds, the place is super busy and a great place to meet new and old friends.  Tourists zoom buy on rental electric bikes without helmets, skills, or a care in the world.   The trails are groomed in the winter and graded in the summer, the wetlands are preserved, the old farm is protected and there is the Willow Creek Park on the corner.  We have a win-win situation where everyone gets what they wanted, and the public welfare is promoted.  Well done.

I thought to myself about the private mountain meadow that I lost and the public playground that replaced it.  While bittersweet, I think in the end I would choose to share the meadow with those who enjoy it so much.  In the big picture, it is something we are all asked to do; share the great place where we live and the good fortune that we have realized by living here.  Maybe the roads are a bit congested, and the slopes are more crowded, and the trails are full of riders from out-of-town but there is still room for everyone, and things are usually better when shared.  It is still pretty nice.