Follow the Water – 4 - Utah – Incidents and Accidents, Threats and Allegations

 

The frantic cry we always hear in the water business is that there is too much ‘paper’ water out there and not enough ‘wet’ water.  That means that there are more prescribed Water Rights than there is actual water for people to use.  That is ideally rectified by the priority system of ‘first in time first in right’ where if you have a senior right you get your water and if you have a later priority date, or junior right, you are out of luck.  That theoretically takes care of drought and Climate Change or long-term drought as the deniers like to call it.  But does it really?  Utah gets about 50 million acre-feet of precipitation from the sky each year, the question is what do we wan to do with it.

When it hits the fan, it is better to be at the top of the ditch with a municipal right and a shovel than anything else.  When push comes to shove, water for people or municipal water usually takes precedence, as it should, and then comes agricultural water and finally industrial uses.  And when ground water runs out you just dig a deeper well and get a bigger pump.  Priority problem solved?  And what about all the billions of dollars the State has paid for the Central Utah Project (CUP) infrastructure to bring Colorado River water from the Uinta mountains to the Wasatch front, or for that matter, the billions they want to spend bringing water from Lake Powell to Saint George, when both those uses have a later, or junior priority date. 

Now that all the free water has been distributed for our mutual beneficial use, and water is more of a commodity to be bought and sold, how do priority dates change with the change of use and location.  Water Rights with early or senior priority dates are much more valuable because they are much less likely to be shut off in a drought.  Is that maximizing beneficial use and fair to all concerned?  Water is also supposed to be distributed by The State Engineer, Teresa Wilhelmsen PE and her Division of Water Rights, for the most beneficial use with respect to the Public Welfare, natural stream riparian environment and recreational opportunities.  That is harder to define than drought or Climate Change.

But our biggest issue now is the vanishing amount of water in the Great Salt Lake and the Colorado River.  Inflow into the lake has been shrinking since Bringham Young took his first drink and upstream use has exploded.  In the 60’s they feared the lake was declining so fast that it would all but disappear.  In the 80’s, during the last bonanza snowpacks before Climate Change kicked in, the lake grew to historical levels flooding railroads, highways, farms and fields.  The Union Pacific railroad told our Governor Norman Bangerter to get control of his lake, or they would leave.  So, Norm ordered some pumps the size of my house and pumped the lake out in the west desert to evaporate.  Problem solved?  But then Climate Change and long-term drought kicked in as snowpack runoff supply decreased, and upstream demand increased.  You can imagine what that does to the price of water. The lake shrank and toxic dust from the exposed lakebed began to blow into Salt Lake and our little Vatican City.  That is bad for Public Welfare. 

Unfortunately, keeping water in a stream or lake for fish, or aesthetics, the environment or just for the fun of it does not constitute a beneficial use so dedicating water to the lake is tricky.  The State Engineer could theoretically give every upstream Water Right holder a 10-20 percent ‘haircut’ on their water right and put that water into the lake but that would be political suicide, and Teresa wants to keep her job.  It would be hard to identify all that saved water all the way to the lake when junior Water Right holders would love to use it, even with the haircut. 

Friends of the lake are suing the state saying that it is not in the best Public Welfare to dry up the lake and create toxic dust storms.  They might have a point since the Friends of Mono Lake sued California for drying up their lake and won on the Public Welfare argument.  But what the State of Utah decided to do, in their infinite wisdom and generosity, is develop funding mechanisms to pay people for their water and let it run to the lake. They would need about 8-million-acre feet* to stabilize the lake at a good level and it started to snow again the next winter, so they have put that project on the back burner.   Tragedy narrowly averted.  Until his year when the drought returned.

The Colorado River is a different story, but the same. There is not enough water.  Or it is being used for the wrong things.  Or they don’t accurately model the conjunctive effect of the depleted groundwater on surface water flows.  The River was divided on paper among all the contiguous states when it supposedly ran 17 million acer feet a year, but then they found it only runs 13.  Recently it has been running 10 and lately only 5-million-acre feet a year.  Utah gets about 10% of whatever it flows and although we do not use all our share yet, there is already much more paper Water Rights allocated for its use, not to mention what we might owe to the Native Americans who have the first priority date of 10,000 years BC. 

The states are now fighting, suing and renegotiating their paper agreements on an ever-decreasing pool of wet water.  There is an exaggerated farmer mentality going on where they each want to use it before they lose it and put it to beneficial use before the next guy.  Things like the Lake Powell Pipeline to Saint George. That will physically make it harder for them to take it away.  So, stay tuned while the paper water, that no one can drink, catches up to the wet water, that no one can afford, for the benefit of all.  In the meantime, keep conserving, eat less meat and play less golf, grow a brown lawn and stop burning stuff. 

 

 

*An acre-foot is one acre (43,560 sqft) or approximately a football field, covered in one foot of water.  That is about 326,000 gallons or enough for 2-4 families per year, depending on the family and year. 

Traffic Flows Like Water

 With apologies to my old roommates and City leaders, Bruce and Candy Erickson, the roads leading to Park City are an embarrassment.  They were of the school that said ‘if you do not build       big roads, people will not drive here’.  I’m a water-guy but traffic flows like water, for politics and money.  I’m here to tell you that they all still drive here, in droves.  Winter, spring, summer and fall, morning noon and night, 224 and 248 are packed with service workers, skiers, students, commuters, tourists and us.  It is time to abandon the old idea that these byways are gardens or parkways or sidewalks or bike paths, they are roads that should move people from what generates them to what attracts them.  Roads are not deterrents or tools, like water and housing, for politicians to limit growth, development or desire.  That is what political spine is for. 

It doesn’t take a half billion dollars of new infrastructure to fix this.  Let’s wisely use the roads we have.  We could do it now with two buckets of paint and restripe the pinch points.  Get the 15-foot planters and islands out of the medians of these roads and get rid of the 20-foot-wide bike lane - shoulders on both sides.  These are highways and not botanical gardens.  Let bikers ride on the bike paths.  Put artistically painted and architecturally aesthetic, flexible divider walls, taller than our oncoming headlights, in the middle to separate traffic and maximize capacity.  Then we can have 4 uninterrupted lanes from Kamas to the Bonanza and Kimball Junction to Deer Valley and Main Street.  From there traffic can split to the various attractions.

 

There can be bus lanes and shoulders or emergency access and snow storage as needed.  Stop messing around with County Ubers and Apps or traffic circles and competing bus systems and just repaint the damn roads.  We cannot afford the luxury of all these unused lanes, medians and shoulders. In Boston, for example, during rush hour everyone drives on the shoulders.   In Aspen they built a mini-Glenwood Canyon to get people up-valley.  In New York they stopped building new roads in the 60’s and maximized the roads they have.  Sometimes, as Freud said, ‘a cigar is a cigar’ and I say, ‘a road is a road’.   

We have rebuilt 248 every year for 5 years where it shrinks down to two lanes by the schools, for tunnels, crossings and pipes, but we have not considered fitting four lanes through there, since UDOT proposed it in 2017 and we respectfully, but foolishly, declined.  Now we are at the bottom of their list and have a low priority.  And 20-30 years ago, we told UDOT we were ‘not fly over type people’ at 224 north onto 80 west and are still stuck with the back-up from Kimball to The Canyons all winter.  Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.  UDOT doesn’t often have time for ‘those people up there’ and they would rather serve the conservatives from Utah County who vote for them and embrace their plans and prejudice.  It is political, and we need to know what to kiss and when to kiss it, especially with Olympic money ostensibly coming due.  UDOT priorities can change in the blink of an eye, depending on whose winking. 

Our new UDOT representative is Commissioner Tom Jacobson who is a lawyer who understands transportation and the political process and is a good guy.  Let’s lean on him for advice and influence.  Better yet we should take over jurisdiction of 224 and 248 and do what we want, as creatively as we can, with flex lane barriers and multi-use shoulders.  The best way to control land is to buy it and the best way to control roads is to own them.  I am embarrassed, we are embarrassed, UDOT should be embarrassed and something must be done, soon.   Let’s work smarter with our representatives and elect sensible people like Diego, Tana or Beth who can take action now for a transportation vision for the Olympics and beyond.  I’m sure both pragmatic Bruce and aesthetic Candy Erickson would approve. 

 

Matthew Lindon, PE

Hydrologist & Traffic Engineer

WaterandWhatever.blogspot.com         

Courage and Cooperation

             I attended a meet-and-greet for friends Diego and Tana the other night.  Last names are not needed for friends and family in our small town.  If you don’t know who they are by now, you haven’t been paying attention.   I was so impressed with the committed people they were and the powerful personality they each exhibited.  Tana is a wile veteran of the Town Council already, after only one term, and she gave us the inside scoop on how things really work, and how they don’t.  Diego is the relative novice with dreams and aspirations but instead of promising us the world as most desperate upstarts do, he outlined his concerns with potential solutions.  Most of all he listened. 

Housing and traffic, new development entitlements and respect for old residents were the theme as usual but there was a tangible sense that it is time to rise above our self-absorption, petty squabbles and differences and get things done.  The Park City Five Way code is; the downhill skier has the right of way, as does the up-hill biker/hiker and the vehicle IN a round-about, but finally and most importantly, have fun and don’t be a dick.  Diego and Tana get this, which is more than I can say about some others. 

With the Olympic pressures already here, this may be our last chance to define the town that we want, instead of the one we can no longer abide.  Wallowing in analysis paralysis, we are continually surprised that every new final study and analysis ends with the need for more study and analysis, while we ignore the educated and objective recommendations of a very professional staff and council.  Eventually it takes temerity and courage to move forward, with a solid master plan but with flexibility to adapt and improvise. 

Inside conflicts and outside pressures must be identified clearly for their intentions and motives that may not be in the best public interest.  Backroom deals or Sate intervention should not decide City or private development entitlements.  It takes candidates with backbone to stand up to these pressures and make decisions to move forward.  These two candidates have the spine and resilience to recognize and address all of the contiguous issues and interests, to get the job done. 

In the end it is about coordination and communication of our entire community of people.  Wasatch and Summit counties have an incredible amount of development on the books that Park City is undoubtably driving.  Deer Valley is doubling in size in the next five or ten years and the affiliated suburbs are stretching from Deer Creek to Echo.  These people are not going to go to Heber or Coalville to go skiing or for dinner.  A free cookie or an App is not going to get them to carpool or get on a bus or gondola.    The gap between local homes and affordable housing is insurmountable and the loss of local character is lamentable. 

We built this town for our families, not for fly by night developers, and we want to stay here.   We need to face these issues together. I believe Tana and Diego have the ability to learn, listen and lead with all the stakeholders’ interests balanced with the common good and social welfare, to keep Park City cool and keep Park City kind.   Vote Tana and Diego August 12, for the new Park City and for the old Park City.

Matthew Lindon, 1979.

Follow the Water - 3 - Park City

 

 

Water use in the Park City area was historically focused on surface water, which was used for agriculture and mining processing. Ground water was a nuisance to mining and was pumped or drained to the surface for disposal.  Now it drains through the mine tunnels and is fed by gravity to our new 120-million-dollar water treatment plant that removes heavy metals such as Arsenic, Mercury, Cadmium and Lead Zeppelin.  Streams have dried as this water has been used in the city and sold to purveyors in the Snyderville Basin to help pay for the new treatment plant.  Everything is a tradeoff.  You don’t get something for nothing.

 

With the modern change from mining and agricultural water use to municipal uses, the demand has shifted from surface water treatment to the capture of cool, clean groundwater.   Municipal wells in the Park City area therefore withdraw water from consolidated rocks, such as the fractured and faulted limestone and sandstone.  These rock formations are locally broken into separate block formations that can inhibit or isolate water flow and withdrawal, which can make finding reliable water difficult.  Water that recharges in the bedrock outcrops in the mountains, typically takes 15 to 40 years to move through the system, although much older water can still be found stored in the underlying bedrock and aquifers.  Because of the low capacity for bedrock ground water storage, the hydrological system is very dependent on the amount of annual precipitation and is therefore sensitive to prolonged drought and climate change.  Less than normal precipitation or overuse can result in substantial groundwater level decline, both in the bedrock (affecting municipal wells), and in the basin fill (affecting stream flow). 

 

In addition, the under-drain effect of the system of mine tunnels below our town also influences surface waters and subsequent ground water flows, inhibiting recharge and draining some water out of the basin toward Jordenelle, East Canyon and Echo, and even Snowbird and Brighton.  Mining related sinkholes, historically opened along Silver Creek and elsewhere, can capture the entire stream and direct it underground towards our aquifers or towards other drainages.   Because of our increased use of surface waters and springs, the local stream flows have diminished and historical recharge to the aquifer have suffered.  Unfortunately, in-stream flows are hard to protect in Utah where only the DNR Divisions of Wildlife and Parks can hold an in-stream right.  Protecting stream flows and establishing a base or minimum flow for water quality and wildlife or for riparian habitat and aesthetics, is difficult in this climate of low supply, high demand, and expensive water rights.  This protection may require cooperation of all the stakeholders and leadership to enable new legislation of in-stream flows. 

 

The public owns the water of the State, and the State Engineer distributes it to all for ‘beneficial use’ and economic development, till it is all gone.  The State Engineer must consider other issues when approving a water right, such as availability, interference, speculation, economic feasibility, recreation, natural stream environment and ‘public welfare.’  Fish and flowing water unfortunately are not considered a ‘beneficial use’ by the State Engineer and public welfare is hard to define.    But if the people lead, the leaders will follow.  It is we, who dictate what the ‘public welfare’ is, that must be protected by The State Engineer and our legislators.  We must send policy and law makers a strong message that we value clean, flowing water and the riparian environment that contribute to the quality of life that we all cherish.  Clearly, drying up the Great Salt Lake or The Colorado river is not good for public welfare.

 

The changing picture of the future of the Park City water resources is full of challenges.  This is a system, surely affected by man and climate, which is a system out of balance.  Our water supply is now being taxed to its limits both in water quantity and water quality.  Park City’s historical punitive-conservation rates have been repealed recently, at the request of some fat cats, allowing big users to waste water at the expense of small users who conserve.  Water flows downhill, but it also flows towards money.  How much will we pay for good water when we are thirsty?  What are the full costs of our consumption?  Water is an inelastic commodity and when we need it, price is not an issue.   Our affluence enables us to access the water within our basin and reach beyond its borders for augmentation, but it also inhibits our desire and ability to live within our natural basin means, as John Wesley Powell encouraged us to do more than one hundred and fifty years ago. 

 

We need to consider the needs and rights of our neighbors, the cost of our desires to the streams and wildlife as well as the limits of the natural systems that sustain us.  If we work at it, together we can live in harmony with our environment and with each other.  Picture the Native American Utes at their summer camp in our basin only 200 years ago, with grasses up to the belly of a Bison, a hydrologic system in balance.  Let that be our guide and goal.  Sustainability will require good science and engineering, legislation and regulation, conservation, and cooperation, which will respect the limits of nature and our environment and reveal the priorities and character of this great community.   

 

Keep Park City Kind.  Keep Park City Cool. 

 

 

 

Matthew Lindon, PE   

                                                         

 WaterandWhatever.blogspot.com                                                                                       

Follow the Water 2 – The Snyderville Basin

Follow the water on its frantic gravity trip downhill, not knowing where it is flowing, but going there directly.  The stream in my backyard, Willow Creek, still flows wildly during snowmelt season, recharging the local aquifer along with its related wetland but it shuts down abruptly when the snow is gone and our local water companies start capturing it for peak summer irrigation use.  Local lawn and garden irrigation increases water demand on our municipal suppliers tenfold but Willow Creek recovers nicely in the fall when irrigation ceases.  The diminishment of surface stream flows also inhibits the recharge of the meadows and Park areas that serve as a storage sponge for late summer stream flows, like The Snyderville Meadow, Park Meadows, Deer Valley, Heber, Midway and the Rhodes Valley of Kamas.  The groundwater discharge areas and wetland behind my house flow nicely all spring in conjunction with Willow Creek and the high local water table.  As the creek flow abates in the summer and autumn, the discharge stops and the wetland dries up along with the local aquifer, which does not recover until next spring.

The Snyderville Basin geology is bound by folded and faulted sedimentary rocks, mostly sandstone, quartzite, shale, and limestone to the west and south, and by the Keetley volcanics, tuffs and breccias to the east.  The basin is filled with unconsolidated alluvial (stream) and colluvial (glacial) deposits, as thick as 275 feet deep.  These deposits are typically coarse grained at the mountain interface, which is great for recharge, but are unfortunately fine grained in the basin and therefore do not yield water as easily as many of the unconsolidated fill basins in Utah like Salt Lake City or Heber. 

 

The Silver Springs behind the Park City Nursery and Church is the source of most of the culinary water for our subdivision of the same name.  It typically flows about 500 gallons per minute (gpm) of cool, clean mountain water, suitable for bottling, although it is considered relatively ‘hard’ because of the limestone source.  This flow can increase to as much as 5,000-15,000 gpm in the spring because of surface snowmelt runoff infiltration.  This high flow, however, is not usable due to water quality issues. Recently the springs ran red at high water because of golf course construction above it in the Nugget or Navajo Sandstone.  In our effort to get more golf we nearly ruined our perfect source of gravity-fed spring water.  Luckily, the spring cleared up in a few months, on it’s own, and has not run red since. In addition, the Silver Springs Subdivision was built in a wetland, before that was illegal,  and has an extensive underdrain system that depresses the local water table, so our homes do not flood, or float and our foundations do not implode.  The underdrain system flows several hundred gpm in the spring and never really drops below 100 gpm all year round, draining a billion pounds of water safely away by gravity every year.  Some homeowners want to abandon this underdrain system, due to maintenance costs, at our own puerile.  This illustrates the conjunctive relationship between surface water, groundwater, nuisance water and casual water along with water quality concerns in our local neighborhoods.  Hydrology, along with politics, is local. 

 

Our population in the Snyderville Basin is expected to double in the next 25 years, bringing with it challenges and choices between conservation and consumption, balance and blind ignorance, sustainability, and selfishness.    Snow making water demands are increasing and even though this use is more like winter water storage in the snowpack than depletion or consumption of the resource, it is somewhat indulgent and energy intensive.  A quarter section of local agriculture alfalfa can use as much water as Silver Springs Subdivision and our big landscape trees drink more free water from the near surface aquifer than we pay for through our water meters.  Much of the local mine water is being collected, used and sold, drying up local streams.  There is no more casual, free or extra water. 

 Importing new water into the basin is expensive but necessary and critical as we outgrow the local supply that we have. A punitive conservation rate has been in place for years that cuts our use and the costs to reasonable homeowners but as much as sixty percent of our water is pumped over Promontory from the Weber River, ten to fifteen miles away. There is a huge pumping station there with a full-time, live-in caretaker to watch the huge pumps.  Water is power and energy, and vice-versa.   Local private water companies are running dry and need to buy this expensive water for millions of dollars per year.  They are starting to realize the value, worth and cost of water.  Their water bills are going up.  Something has to give.

 

We can over pump our wells and import expensive new water to the basin until the cows-come-home but eventually, we will have to balance supply and demand.  This will involve charging a price reflecting the cost of what water is worth, so we conserve it and recognize its value. Despite years of consternation and conflict that wasted time, money and water there has been recent foresight and success.    There has been an effort to regionalize and coordinate the wholesale and retail companies in the basin for efficiency, redundancy, and reliability of our shared resources.  With prudence and good leadership this is possible, but only with cooperation and conservation by all of us. Brown is beautiful.  

 

Keep Park City Kind.  Keep Park City Cool.

waterandwhatever.blogspot.com

Share the Trails

 

After several cool, late spring days in the dessert riding on our own private White Rim Trail on the Lower Flint Trail in the Glen Canyon Recreation, we had exhausted the deliberate micro hikes in the slot canyons around our camp and decided we decided to head north to and higher for some cooler climes.  At the top of Indian Canyon between Price and Duchesne we found a nice cool and quiet campground on Reservation Ridge at 9400 feet that we never knew existed.  We congratulated ourselves for knowing how to read real maps and for finding the secret camping destinations in Utah that would take our entire lives to explore. 

After dinner I took a reconnaissance loop around the campground and, on the advice of some French Moto riders, I found an old ATV logging road.  It was technical and rocky, thin and steep but I put my e-bike in Turbo mode and was able to power up the 45-degree slopes without flipping over backwards, mainly because of 40 years of riding experience.  I decided it was ridable and that I would explore it the next morning when heart was fresh and my eyes were clear.   

My eyes are bad from falling on my head too much and do not process well dynamically, which causes me to fall on my head more, so it as a compounding effect, like compound interest of my brain.  My eyes can’t focus quickly so I have learned to look further up the trail.   My pulse had dropped to 30 beats per minute (bpm) a few years ago and my four chambers were uncoordinated.  So, they gave me a pace-maker that topped out at an orchestrated 120 bpm.  That didn’t allow me to ride very much but over the years I have convinced them to pick it up to 150 bpm.  I’ll buy the damn batteries.   The only downside is that if I exceed 150 bpm I can black out for a half minute or so, which is inconvenient, at least.  Without my Class-1 e-bike I would not be able to ride at all, and that is unacceptable. Mountain biking is apparently very dangerous, but I need to get out.

The next day after breakfast, I took off on the trail that was very steep, challenging and technical.  It wound through some great north facing forests and south facing clear cuts and I had to blaze some deadfall now and then to open the trail. It trended generally to the Northeast, and I figured it would contour around eventually to the campground entry road.  As I got further out, I realized that I was burning up battery power quickly on the unreal steep climbs and pushing my pulse rate.  I slowed my roll to save power and keep my pulse reasonable.  I soon realized that I had burned more than half my battery and therefore was unable to turn around and go back the way I came.  I became nervous and it became an official adventure at that point.  No one would find me out here. 

When worried I usually consider the worst-case scenario and then admit that, like a million times before, I would figure it out.  Comforted by that realization, I powered on.  I took some wrong turns and got lost a few more times but tended in the right direction and right before I ran out of juice, I found the road that led back to camp.  Tragedy narrowly averted, I pulled into camp where my wife and dog were, glad to see me, and I them. 

The point is, I would not be riding a bike without help and I would not have ridden this trail without a fair bike and some good skill for the great experience that makes me feel alive and nineteen again.  Some of my young or healthy friends will ride with me, as long as I ride in the back and do all the talking, so they don’t have to try to keep up.  Others are less inclusive and can’t stomach a ‘cheater’ that might challenge the exclusive right to trials to only those who are healthy, wealthy and wiled.  I just relish the opportunity to get out-and-about, see some nature, have an adventure and get some moderate exercise that won’t drain my battery or break my heart.  Ride on my friends, share the trails.  Ride a mile on my bike.

“I am Exalted by Water”

 

I am defined by water. I can’t imagine life without it.  I come from water and return to it whenever I can, daily, seasonally, yearly, constantly.  I was born on an Island, surrounded by water.  A Long Island near The City island.  My grandfather and father were in Public Water Works.  My first job was painting fire hydrants for my dad, Public Water Works.  My favorite job was being a lifeguard, languid and bittersweet.  My first sport was swimming, fast and furious.  My first friend was a high diver, daring and death defying.  My first love was a swimmer, warm, smooth and wet. My first broken arm required 9 casts since I kept jumping in the water with them on, lucky for me my uncle was my orthopedic.  My first major was Fluid Mechanics, Bernoulli, Newonian.  My first occupation was hydrology and hydraulics - surface water - repairing dams and rivers in the desert.  My retirement is spent partially on the central west coast where the sea is clean, blue and cold and I can watch it every day, even if I don’t go in much anymore.  Water encompasses and embodies me.  It is who I am.  We are all something.

 

My first recollection was of my dad taking me out in the ocean on his shoulders at Jones Beach and then launching me on a wave to ride towards the shore.  I must have been 6 or 8 and fearless.  The feeling of the ocean pitching me forward swiftly, all the way to the beach was incomprehensible. It felt alive, powerful and a little menacing.  Dad showed me how to catch waves myself, looking for sets with size and shape, and catching an early one before there was too much water on the beach.  It opened a new independent world to me, similar to learning to cross the street or tie my own shoes.  With his supervision, I moved out into deeper water to catch better waves, without losing my toehold of the seafloor that kept me from washing out to sea with the mysterious Under Toad.  Emboldened, I dropped into a big one but I was late and inside and It flipped me up the curl and crashed me down to the floor and sat on my chest for what felt like eternity.  Sputtering to the surface eventually and crying for my mother, I raced to the shore but found my dad there laughing and smiling incongruously.  WTF I said with my limited lexicon as he shook a mound of sand out of my little red surf shorts.  He asked me how I liked the ‘washing machine’ and I knew instantly what he meant.  He said next time drop my head and hands and go out the back door.  I asked him if there was anything else I needed to know and he just said yes.  I wasn’t sure what that meant but would figure it out after a PBJ sandwich, a Coke and the half-hour mandatory rest that seemed to be the prudent law of the beach. 

Conversely, I was swimming with my stepdaughter in big surf one day and she got caught in a riptide.  She wasn’t a strong swimmer, and I didn’t want her to be alone, so I followed her out.  She was besides herself due to the lack of control and distance building from the shore.  I calmed her down as we tread water and asked her calmly what she thought we should do.  She wanted to swim to an adjacent jetty and climb out.  We looked at the jetty and saw big waves cashing violently on it so that was out of the question.  I told her it was a rip current that would eventually dissipate and let us go in deeper water, but we couldn’t fight it. 

The lifeguards looked oblivious so I told her to swim parallel to the beach with me until we could find an inbound current.  We did this for a while with me asking her periodically if she was all right, and she would say yes, until she didn’t and said she was struggling and going down in the turbulent waves.  I told her swimming is 90% relaxing and calm breathing and I had her float on her back with her hands on my shoulders while I swam slowly.  She laid her head back and breathed rhythmically, trying to relax and recover.  Finally, we felt a current flowing towards the beach, and we turned and rode the waves in.  As we walked from the water a lifeguard ran over and asked if we were ok. I said YES and she said NO but we walked back to our blanket for some tuna sandwiches, a beer and the mandatory half hour beach nap.  After a while I asked her if she wanted to get back on the horse and go for a swim.  She said NO, never again. 

 

After freshman year of high school, I reported to our summer swim Club on the Great South Bay for our first practice.  There was a new saltwater swimming pool built between the docks of the bay and the nautical Clubhouse and lawn.  After practice I walked past the women’s locker room on the canal and out swung my old fiend Gina Sweeny in a bright yellow homemade polka dot bikini.  I didn’t recognize her out of her one-piece racing suit and she swung her hips that could sink ships, and brand knew tips way up firm and high, like most young women know how to do, instinctually, like holding a baby on their hip.  I had been in a carpool with Gina for years and knew she was crazy and funny, the best swimmer in the Club and exactly 10 months younger than me, when that was import in swimming and life.  Swimmers are not like racehorses, all born on Jan 1.  This woman Regina was all new to me and I was coming of the age where I would appreciate it. She was an athletic Goldie Hawn with a butterfly upper body and strong legs.  Va va va boom.  Wasting no time, for if you snooze you lose, I asked her to go for a swim, and we spent the rest of the day playing water ballet and swimming through each other’s legs blowing bubbles and laughing innocently.  We would spend the next four years growing up together swimming and sailing and going back behind the boats to smooch.  She loved Cat Stephens, Winnie the Pooh and me, not necessarily in that order.  We all love something. I eventually grew up and moved away from Gina to landlocked Indiana and worse yet, Utah.  All the kids still swim and sing:

 

Gina Sweeny had a ten-foot weenie,

And she showed it to the guy next door.

He thought it was a snake,

And wrapped it with a rake,

Now it’s only five foot four.

 

I also had a great friend, appropriately named Willie Hooper, who was a great swimmer and diver, football, basketball and baseball player.  Not William or Bill or Will but Willie.  With rugged Brad Pitt good looks, a baseball build, blonde hair and blue eyes, he personified and espoused ‘cool’ and was funny as snot.  We would bounce on the high diving boards all day long, doing clown dives and serious dives in our Bonner Bob, banana hammock Speedos.  One day we decided to skip swim practice and smoke surreptitiously in the white rocking chairs on the screen porch, incognito.  It was a blast watching the others work until big coach Reese snuck up behind us and banged our heads together and made us swim a double practice that day. 

When Willie wore a Dungaree Jacket with his Varsity A letter from Amityville High School on it, my dad asked him what the A was for, Willie looked down at the letter, perplexed for the moment, and then smiled and said, ‘A is for Outstanding’.  Not the sharpest tool in the shed but he was an outstanding guy with a big heart.

Despite him smoking 2 packs a day at age 12, my only goal was to beat him in the breast-stroke and in our last race we tied for third.  When we both sauntered up to the podium the coach was confused about what to do with the one ribbon.  Willie took it and ripped it in half and gave me the top part with a grin. He lost the Club Swimmer of the Year that summer by one half a point, but he didn’t care because Gina won it instead and we both loved Gina.  She accepted the trophy that winter in a homemade yellow polka-dot dress with Willie, in a sporty white turtleneck, at her side.  ‘I don’t recognize you with your clothes on’,’ we liked to say in the winter.

One day I came home from a two-week wrestling camp and found him in the Clubhouse smooching with Gina.  I asked him what was going on and he said he was making out with my girlfriend.  I said OK but did they want to go swimming when they were done.  We all got up and swam for the rest of the day and summer like nothing had ever happened.  And it didn’t.

Years later the three of us were drinking by candlelight at the Club on the night of the NYC blackout.  We went home to Willie’s house, across from the Amityville Horror house so we could ring their bell and run like old times, and Willie could show us his new motorcycle.   We all hopped on it to make believe we were riding.  Of course, we lost our balance and fell to the floor of the garage, becoming harmlessly pinned under the bike and laughing hysterically.  Willie’s dad came out to ask what we thought we were doing and Willie chortled that we were just going for a ride.  We were locked in the garage for the rest of the night, but we didn’t really mind.  Willie was haunted by fire and smoke and burned out young at 42, from lung cancer.  We all have something.  But we all still swim and sing along:

 

Every party has a pooper,

That’s why we invited you,

party pooper, Willie Hooper.