Celebrating the Santa Fe River Watershed
By Jack Loeffler
Jack Loeffler moved to northern New Mexico in 1962 and has spent time as a sandal-maker, fire-lookout, environmentalist, curator, aural historian, sound collage artist, radio producer, and writer. His most recent book is entitled Healing the West: Voices of Culture and Habitat. He is currently producing a new radio series and book, both entitled Thinking Like a Watershed. In 2009, Loeffler was a recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Santa Fe Canyon pierces the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos, the eastern arm of the Southern Rockies that together with their western arm, the San Juan, Tusas, and Jemez Mountains, embrace the northern reaches of the Rio Grande. Santa Fe Canyon cradles the streambed of the Santa Fe River, a frequently abandoned meander that occasionally flows into the Rio Grande, which itself marks the course of the second largest rift of its kind in the world. To paraphrase the late, great Aldo Leopold, thinking like a watershed is possibly the clearest way to understand homeland.
It is thought by some scholars that four hundred years ago, La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís, was laid out geo-mythically by Tlascalan Indians who had accompanied Juan de Oñate northward from Zacatecas. These Mexican Indians had an understanding of the appropriate way to physically craft a community within the context of surrounding habitat. Mountains lie to the east, water is present in relative abundance, the westerly sun showers its light, life is nurtured, the landscape is spiritually revered, the spirit of place is honored. Thus Santa Fe was born and has lingered long and in beauty.
Indeed the Santa Fe River has been the aquatic lifeline of not just the human community, but also the surrounding biotic community within the geophysical cradle that provides the structural cohesion of this watershed. The myriad life forms, most of which are not visible to the naked eye, collectively generate an élan that is felt throughout the watershed by all living creatures whose sensitivities are honed in favor of survival.
The great Russian geographer/philosopher Pyotr Kropotkin contended that evolution of species owes far more to mutual cooperation than mutual antagonism.
He favored political decentralization as the most just and intelligent way for the human species to comport itself. Subsequent to Kropotkin, the bioregional movement stirred within our species as a means of comporting ourselves favorably within our respective ecosystems. It may be difficult for an individual human to envision the home bioregion, but one can readily identify the home watershed with only modest effort. The Santa Fe River watershed is tiny relative to the Rio Grande watershed of which it is part, yet it is vitally important both to itself and to the greater biogeographic continuum. Biogeography, the study of plant and animal communities over space and time, is a most splendid field of science. It has been known to lead the practitioner into a state of consciousness that is utterly appropriate for our time on the planet.
We are presently dominated by an erroneous economic paradigm that favors money far beyond intrinsic worth. We see turning habitat into money as the fundament of fiscal wisdom. We have long since secularized habitat, landscape, and waterways in a way that is a horrendous affront to the sensibilities of our Puebloan neighbors who have successfully survived in small autonomous communities wherein the seasonal cycles are celebrated in great ceremonials that honor the spirit of place. They have much to teach us about attitude.
If we can come to regard ourselves as members of the biotic community privileged to inhabit the Santa Fe River watershed, to perceive it as homeland wherein we become utterly familiar with its biotic and geophysical characteristics, to understand intuitively the elements of its own story, to become truly conscious of the ramifications of our human presence and act accordingly on behalf of the greatest good, our homeland may yet survive the juggernaut of factors that threaten so much of our planetary ecosystem. In my opinion, we must nurture a collective spiritual connection to homeland. To again cite Aldo Leopold, “Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to land.”
Agua Fria Village and the Once and Future River
The title of this "position paper" is the approximate title of an article by the Trust for Public Land in its national Land and People biannual magazine issue of May of 2006: http://www.tpl.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_item_id=20636&folder_id=3228. We believe it accurately reflects the passion that Agua Frians have for their land and water from the past and into tomorrow.
DISCLAIMER: This is not an official position of the Agua Fria Village Association (of which I am President), Acequia Agua Fria (of which I am President), or the Agua Fria well Owners Association (of which I am Vice-President); but rather a compilation of a lot of things, said by a lot of Agua Frians, over many years. It is not a legal or a historical treatise but references a number of factual events.
But for the record….
Agua Fria Village is a place of settlement in New Mexico, first recognized as a place of modern recorded settlement, when Sergeant Major (Maestro Campo) Roque Madrid was given a land grant on the Santa Fe River from Ojito Fresco to Pueblo Quemado in 1693 by General Don Diego de Vargas for his service in the 1692 “Reconquest” of New Mexico by the Spanish Crown. His request was granted based on his parents and grandparents having farmed this area prior to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt.
Agua Fria exists on an alluvial plain farmed by Native Americans until a regional drought of circa 1250 A.D. The place was partially resettled in the 1300’s then finally abandoned in the 1400’s (http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/30-Dig).
Although the ancient Agua Fria Village has nearly been swallowed up by City of Santa Fe Annexations and nearly driven into extinction by the illegal damming of the Santa Fe River managed by the Santa Fe Ring, Agua Frians conceive of a totally different identity from the City of Santa Fe. There are some real distinctions between Agua Fria Village and the City of Santa Fe: Agua Frians do not consider the Fiestas as there celebration, but rather May 15th San Isidro Day; they do not pilgrimage north to Santuario but instead south to San Antonio Church in Cieneguilla; Agua Frians consider that they supported the City residents by their local food production, adobe block production and fuel wood collection. Agua Frians see themselves as completely independent of the City of Santa Fe and living on sustainable lands that have been encroached on by City’ values and greed. Whereas, city councilors often publicly talk about weaning the village off it dependence on city sewer and water systems for the last five decades.
So it has been a strife and conflict that has existed for quite some time. The City has asked for many things from us and we have reluctantly complied and then have been “abused” for complying.
Every stick of wood burned in a fireplace in Santa Fe to keep warm was brought by the vendors living on Agua Fria Street (no wood came from Pecos until the highway was paved in the 1950’s). Almost every ear of corn and pound of flour, and slice of meat came from Agua Fria; the virtual breadbasket of the City of Santa Fe. The repayment to Agua Frians has been the theft of land, water rights, the closing of acequias, and the cramming down our throats of every objectionable land use that the City desperately needed and was too good to put into their own backyard: the Siler Road sewer plant, the effluent line to the golf course, the high power electric lines from Algodones and White Rock; the sewer lines to Cieneguilla; the gas lines to Los Alamos; the road network like: Camino de los Carros[i] in the 1890’s, Cerrillos Road in the 1930’s, Airport Road, St. Francis Drive in 1950, Osage in 1955, Rufina Street in 1985 (for the easement) and the building of it in 1999, the Bypass or State Road 599; the Regional landfill; everything took land and divided family members on one side or the other of it physically.
We blocked the four laning of Agua Fria Street and West Alameda; projects that would have ejected long-time residents. We blocked the construction of River Road, Powerline Road, Sunset Road and Richards Avenue to West Alameda; projects which would have turned our community into a subdivision.
We encouraged the extension of Rufina Street, Siler Road, and South Meadows Road and these projects, which would have benefited us most, have literally taken decades.
We have attended all the City and County sponsored planning meetings and have joined task forces that meet for years on end and then their recommendations are shelved. We have been good citizens and partners when both the City and County have been deceitful, and in the pockets of developers. We formed the Southwest Area Taskforce, or SWAT, a powerfully descriptive acronym---in 1980. The group fought for ten years and then just got burnt out. The leaders felt used up by the community and refuse to participate in anything today. Some have moved away.
Over 70% of all the electric power and natural gas comes through the land of Agua Frians. Instead, of giving into the piece-meal easement acquisition we should have fought a class action lawsuit and asked for toll power lines and toll roads in exchange for our loss of wet water. But then we aren’t like that. Most feel we just need to go along to get along.
So we have had a relationship of broken promises with the City of Santa Fe:
From the American Society of Irrigation Engineers Annual conference and report for 1892-1893:
“But besides this we have here impounded 500 acre feet, or more than 20,000,000 gallons of water, ready to be turned on in July when the Acequias fail and the fruit in ready to shrivel. This will supply for July and August 1,000 acres and save the crop, worth $20 dollars an acre, or a quarter of a million of dollars. Here is an ample warrant of the expenditure, which will be profitable for both the company and the community.”
So the sales pitch for the reservoirs was that it would help the farmers. But it was a ploy to sell them water rather than to guarantee them water.
We’ve gone to many city council meetings and Municipal Boundary Commission meetings and the official representatives will say: “that is ancient history” and it may be. But it has been handed down from grandparent to grandchild and is fresh on the mind of most Agua Frians.
Agua Frians love their river and their land. The Santa Fe River helps to define the cultural landscape and our sense of place.
So enough history and to the charge of the Core Working Group: how would you put 1,000 acre feet annually into the Santa Fe River?
We feel that the product revealed on February is the best thing for all parties involved including the Agua Fria Village.
To get to this clean ending point we asked ourselves the following:
1.What would we like to see in a Living River? A flow of water that is something that comes down on San Isidro Day and the Santa Fe River Blessing on May 15th for sure and waters the plantings that groups like the Santa Fe Watershed Association have done. Also the once a year flushing of the over-the-winter-riverbed (a “spring cleaning” if you will). The first City Of Santa Fe Ordinance in 1896 made it illegal for residents to dump the bodies of dead animals in the riverbed to wait for a flushing.[ii]
2. What are our values?
For people in Agua Fria, it is a lot about customs and culture. The old Hispanic saying: “water is life” rings as true today as it did 400 years ago.
3. How would we feel about a more natural river?
Historically, Agua Frians were prohibited from cutting wood in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (now the Santa Fe National Forest) by Royal Decree and were instead directed to the Caja del Rio Grant (sometimes loosely called “Buckman”) for their fuel wood needs. Most people still go there. So that the mismanagement of that forest in the watershed has directly impacted the Santa Fe River Flows, and the blame has to be put squarely on the shoulders of the historical leaders and residents of Santa Fe. To let the forest change from a scattered Ponderosa type with a grass savannah to a water sucking pinion-juniper jungle with Chamisa plants---is a detriment to all in the watershed. Further, the loss of the natural beaver ponds until the last decade has also impacted the watershed adversely. So the restoration of the natural policy is the best management advice.
Agua Frians favor the planting of native trees that replace non-native and invasive trees and shrubs. We have learned a lot about river restoration from the Santa Fe Watershed Association (http://www.santafewatershed.org/). Many of us were taught that “engineers knew best” and that the river had to be channelized for public safety. The more concrete we could pour the better off we were. Get the water off the streets and into the Santa Fe River ASAP. Over the last decade SFWA has spearheaded a lot of presentations, tours and demonstration projects that have dispelled these engineering myths. We have seen how native willow and cottonwood plantings have brought back the banks of the river and wildlife. We have seen how veins . We have seen how a Zuni Bowl, Media Luna, rock mulch rundown and a one rock dam can slow and spread out the water of side arroyos and inlets to the river and make it sink in. This is the 3-S formula: slow it, spread it, make it sink in.
We have a lot of erosion from upstream and some downstream activities. Activities that have a certain legal liability to them if we were to engage in a class action lawsuit. The project flows mitigate this erosive force.
[i] Camino de los Carros was a winding “donkey path” road that you can see evidence of by looking at the wavy north property boundaries of McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Arby’s, Village Inn, etc. It was thirty feet wide and graveled. The road wound around a bit and went from what is now Osage Avenue out to Airport Road. The upper acequia generally followed the road and they would use the road to go maintain the ditch.
After the land exchange for the new Cerrillos Road by the State Highway Department, Manual Romero’s grandfather then lost the land south of Camino de los Carros; as did all people in Agua Fria. This had been farming land on which alfalfa was raised. The entire parcel was put into a tax parcel and former City Councilor Seligman purchased it for a few dollars at a state Tax Sale of which residents were not informed in the 1930’s. This effectively stole all the traditional lands of Agua Frians, whose U.S. Government land Patents (land grants) confirmed in 1909 and issued by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, stretched from the Arroyo de los Chamisos (near the present day Santa Fe Place Mall) to the Arroyo de los Frijoles or the southern most boundary of the San Ildefonso Pueblo grant; a distance of some five to seven miles in length. Lots were narrower in width and may have been only 600 to 900 feet (200 or 300 yards or “varas”).
[ii] Pamela Dupzyk, Education and Outreach Director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association, Presentation.