January 29th 2020
By Sage Kohen
Beginning in 2018, a group of concerned community members issued a series of public statements regarding the Abeyta Settlement Implementation Plan. The purpose was to foster public awareness and raise legitimate concerns about potential negative cultural and environmental impacts of the implementation plan.
Simply put, the Abeyta Settlement implementation promotes an unprecedented increase in deep aquifer water extraction based on a 1950s mechanistic worldview of endless growth for profit. Up to 133 percent of water withdrawn from supply wells must be returned (offset) to the Río Grande under settlement plans, representing a drastic increase in deep aquifer extraction. The settlement implementation seeks to artificially engineer an intact Taos Valley watershed to produce more water to stimulate more development, and plans to send a huge portion of deep aquifer water downstream via five mitigation wells connected to tributary streams and acequias through a series of pipelines and potential water treatment stations. Imagine human-engineered, push-button "springs" controlled by a water master from Santa Fe tapping the deep aquifer, treating such hard water with chemicals, and then releasing it through pipelines to send downstream with soft surface water.
Is this the future we agreed to for a watershed that has been sustained by deep-rooted tradition and vibrant, time-tested natural systems?
Some of us decided to take a number of risks to raise awareness regarding Abeyta Settlement Implementation Plans. Media censorship and a giant slap suit ensued against Guardians of Taos Water (and 50 John Does), most of whom are small farmers and caring stewards of the valley struggling to make ends meet like most locals.
It's challenging standing up to forces that seem so insulated, all-powerful and set in their ways - forces determined to extract every bit of life essence from this earth without regard for the long-term viability of natural systems and those that will inherit them in an uncertain future of climate disruption.
Our world is being decimated by faulty value systems that seek to control, commodify and divide every aspect of life (from the atom to the human mind), thus undermining the basic structural integrity of life, even turning life against itself with nuclear fission.
Challenging such forces often leads to exhaustion, heartache and trauma, especially when such forces simply censor and bulldoze over those dedicated to ensuring a healthier future for those most at risk, including the natural systems that sustain us.
I do not claim to know the answers to the challenges we face; but, frankly, in confronting some of the greatest challenges of our times, I became seriously traumatized.
At Occupy Wall Street, we stood in the faces of towering economic giants looting the collective inheritance and pleaded for a more just economic and social system. The state-sponsored violence inflicted on us broke my heart. Walking through Navajo Nation with Diné youth, and witnessing the booming fracking and coal industry contaminating everything, broke my heart. Visiting the place where the uranium for Hiroshima and Nagasaki was mined, and listening to the locals speak of the last remaining clean water source, broke my heart. Being disregarded and fired on with weaponry and water cannons at Standing Rock broke my heart. Being repeatedly attacked in Taos for defending the inherent rights of nature broke my heart - even more deeply because this was the only place I felt safe and whole in the world.
Our lives depend on the health of our enveloping ecosystems, so why have we not done more to protect and invigorate our life-support systems?
If corporations are guaranteed certain protections under the law (including protections that allow for near wholesale destruction of ecosystems), why are protective rights not extended to natural systems, such as a watershed that millions rely on?
Why are we trying to artificially engineer a provably successful hydrological system that's been perfected over eons, mixing surface water with deep aquifer water via mitigation wells?
How sustainable is this new mitigation well "offset" model being proposed through the Abeyta Settlement, which is dependent on computer-generated models yet to be tested?
What are the long-term consequences of 14 to 18 deep aquifer wells coming online?
I think all can agree that healthy streams, rivers and acequias (even aquifers and watersheds) are the lifeblood of community.
Sage Kohen lives in Taos.
Editor's note: The Abeyta Settlement Implementation Plan is part of the Taos Pueblo Indian Water Rights Settlement Act of 2010. It was a settlement in the decades-old water rights case that sought to finalize Taos Pueblo and acequia water rights in the Taos Valley. Find earlier stories, including about GOT Water, at https://www.taosnews.com/abeyta-settlement/.
A Dream -The Sacrifice
November 20, 2019
by Sabina K. Jones
The Nomadic Peace Caravan productions crew is scouting the northern territories. We are on a mission to pick up our dear friend Leaf and some tools that were donated to us, including around 100 walking sticks. We are also scouting the trails that we will be walking come April. The Chool Bus (aka Beluga and our trusty office) moves along with a bit of a racket, due to the new rack installed on its roof. We move up US 491 on the way to Moab where we will spend the night. The sprawling desert scenery unfolds through the windows and I think of the beauty of this earth, how expansive it is, how worthy it is of our protection. I type on a wooden desk that folds down from the wall. I bring to you a dream that I find significant in the protection of earth and those who cannot speak for themselves.
Before I joined this crew of dedicated folks, I dreamed of a truck bed in the desert. In this truck bed was a litter of baby seals that a man had taken from their mother and taken from their home. I looked at their sweet little bodies, their eyes glittering with innocence. I saw the life that was being stolen from them. They did not belong in the dry heat. I said to the man standing on the truck bed, “Please don’t do this. Just look into their eyes.” He moved in closer and with resistance looked into their eyes. He knew what he was doing was wrong but he felt it was his duty, his job, to take and kill these creatures for profit.
It is difficult to describe a dream in which I change from being first person to third person perspective, in which the eyes I look through change and then suddenly I have no eyes but am an all-seeing and all-perceiving presence. I watched a boy jump on to the truck bed and suddenly we were on the deck of a boat floating in the ocean. He (I) threw the seals back into the water and then leapt in behind them, succumbing to the ocean. Suddenly this character was floating in the vastness, he himself was the sacrifice needed to be made for the seals. There was no longer a boat or a desert to stand on. It was just him and the ocean. Suddenly a fish swam by that had the length of a shark and the body of a stingray. The boy was afraid that the fish was coming to hurt him but really the fish wanted to swim beside him. They swam side by side and the boy felt the comfort of its presence. He felt less alone. The fish swam ahead and as it did the boy grabbed hold of its fin, believing it would take him somewhere safe. As he held on, the speed of the water and the sting of the fish split the boy’s skin down the middle. He let go in agony and all of his flesh beneath the skin was suddenly exposed.
The water carried the boy back to his friends, back to me. He floated down a waterfall and landed in a spring where we all awaited the hero’s return. He emerged from the crystal clear blue waters and we saw his muscles exposed, his skin dangling from his shoulders. The sight was quite disturbing but in his face was a feeling of contentment. It was only in the water now that he felt safe. His selfless actions had changed him, the ocean had changed him and given him, quite literally, a new skin.
I awoke from this dream completely inspired to give of myself. The journey is not easy because it is not meant to be. There will be moments where you feel lost and alone in the struggle. You must hold on and in your holding on you will be changed. To create change, you yourself must be changed. You become what you give yourself to. It is the law of the universe I believe. This new skin will feel vulnerable, but in it you will be held by the waters, closer than ever before to the source of life.