[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 93 (Thursday, July 11, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6643-S6644]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                DROUGHT

  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the effects of a 
natural disaster that lingers across much of the west, drought. There 
is not a segment of the New Mexico population that will not be touched, 
in some form or fashion, by drought this year.
  People in other parts of the country have turned on their television 
sets over the past few weeks and have seen the blazes of catastrophic 
wildfires that are again devastating the western United States. This 
may be the only effect of the drought that many are aware of. Let me 
tell you, the devastation is even more profound.
  Ranchers are being forced to sell off livestock because they can't 
find enough water for them and can't afford the significant feed costs. 
Other agricultural businesses are being forced to shut their doors 
because the agriculture sector as a whole is hurting.
  Most of the National Forests in New Mexico are closed to the public. 
This has added to a decrease in tourism. Let me mention a couple of 
specific examples. First of all, there is a small railroad, the 
historic Cumbres and Toltec Railroad, that takes people through a very 
beautiful part of the State. The railroad contributes to the tourism 
and economic stability of a very poor part of the State. That railroad 
has had to close because it runs through National Forest system lands 
and the fear that the railroad might spark and start a wildfire is a 
threat to imminent to risk. A second example is the river rafting 
operations that have been forced to cease operations because of the 
drought conditions and lack of river flows.
  Municipal and private wells are running dry. In the City of Santa Fe, 
emergency wells for municipal water use are needed because Santa Fe's 
water storage is at 18 percent capacity, the spring run off is only at 
2 percent, and current wells are pumping 24 hours a day. The City of 
Santa Fe is at a Stage 3 water shortage emergency, which allows outdoor 
watering once a week, but the City Council is considering going to 
Stage 4, which would eliminate all outdoor watering. To put this in 
perspective, the last substantial rain for the area was in late 
January.
  A recent article in the New York Times accurately depicts the dire 
situation. It talks about how gardening in a desert is challenging, 
especially during a drought and at a time of mandatory water 
restrictions. The article went on to talk about people spray painting 
plastic flowers and artificial turf, while also using freeze dried 
plants to beautify porches and other areas.
  Santa Fe is only one of the numerous municipalities that have imposed 
restrictions on water use. The article also notes that these 
restrictions are enforced by ``water police'' and that violators face 
steep fines ranging from $20 for a first offense to $200 for a fourth 
offense and stay at $200 for each repeat violation.
  A second article appearing in the Albuquerque Journal, referenced a 
``drought reduction'' cattle sale. The sale took place last week on the 
edge of the Navajo reservation. While most livestock sales generally 
take place on the reservation during September and October, this year 
emergency sales are being held almost every weekend. Hundreds of 
cattle, horses and sheep have already died as a result of the severe 
drought conditions.
  The article goes on to describe the severity of the conditions. 
``Stock ponds have gone dry, fish have died in evaporating lakes, and 
grass has disappeared. Sand blows across reservation roads, and the 
stiff bodies of dead cattle litter the land.''
  The seriousness of the water situation in New Mexico becomes more 
acute every single day. I reiterate that every single New Mexican will 
feel the impact of this drought in one way or another--whether they are 
selling off the essence of their livelihood--livestock, or losing daily 
revenues in other small business, whether they are actually having to 
refrain from watering their own lawns and washing their cars to looking 
for alternative recreational opportunities this summer, the drought and 
its devastation is very real.
  There is a need out west and I stand ready to do what I can. It will 
be a monumental and expensive challenge, but one we cannot avoid. I ask 
unanimous consent that the two articles referenced in my remarks be 
printed in the Record.

                [From the New York Times, July 8, 2002]

               In Santa Fe, It's Time to Paint the Plants

       Gardening in a desert is challenging. Gardening in a desert 
     in a drought is tough. Gardening in a desert in a drought at 
     a time of mandatory water restrictions is ridiculous.
       It's enough to make a hard-core gardener break out the 
     spray paint and feather dusters. Why? To brighten the 
     artificial turf and plastic flowers, of course, and to keep 
     the cobwebs off the freeze-dried evergreens.
       ``Isn't this a hoot?'' said Kay Hendricks, a 70-year-old 
     interior designer who cheerfully pointed out a now-dead 
     wisteria vine as she stuffed a plastic sprig of purple 
     lavender into a pot of freshly painted silk red flowers. ``A 
     little red paint will make any flower a geranium.''
       In a whirlwind tour of her home, Ms. Hendricks showed off a 
     bouquet of what may have once been silk purple zinnias, now 
     painted red to match an American flag hanging on her garage; 
     a potted four-foot-tall plastic cactus with fake thorns; and 
     English ivy with fake dewdrops draped from another pot.
       With drought gripping several Western states this summer, 
     Santa Fe is one of a number of municipalities that have 
     instituted mandatory restrictions on lawn watering, car 
     washing and other uses of water. The restrictions are 
     enforced by ``water police,'' who can impose steep fines and 
     even decrease water flows to scofflaws' homes. Phone lines 
     have been set up so people can report wasteful neighbors to 
     city officials.
       Fines for illegal watering here start at $20 and go up to 
     $200 after the fourth offense, and then stay at $200 for each 
     repeated violation.
       ``There is a guilt to watering things,'' said Mary Thomas, 
     manager of the American Country Collection furniture store in 
     downtown Santa Fe. She used to plant colorful annuals in pots 
     outside her store each spring, but now she has 18 freeze-
     dried miniature evergreens instead.
       ``They don't have to be watered and we can paint them if 
     they lose their color,'' she said. Ms. Thomas said her 
     parents liked the freeze-dried trees so much that they bought 
     some for their own patio.
       The city is at a Stage 3 water shortage emergency, which 
     allows outdoor watering once a week, but the City Council is 
     considering going to Stage 4, which would eliminate all 
     outdoor watering. Reservoirs that the city relies on for 
     water are at 23 percent of normal capacity, and the last 
     substantial rain was in late January, said Chandra Marsh, a 
     water conservation educator and compliance specialist with 
     the City of Santa Fe Water Department.
       Not every plant here is fake or dead. Established low-water 
     perennials are surviving, and hollyhocks and lilies can be 
     seen blooming here and there. But, Ms. Marsh said, it is 
     difficult to establish many plants without regular watering.
       It seems as if everyone in this town is either adding a few 
     silk and plastic plants to their yards, or knows someone who 
     is doing

[[Page S6644]]

     so while letting the grass die in the baking dry heat.
       Mary Branham, 71, has switched from pots with nearly 200 
     red geraniums to all silk and plastic plants and flowers this 
     year. ``It seemed irresponsible even when we can water once a 
     week,'' she said. Ms. Branham's terra cotta pots now have 
     blue hydrangeas, ornamental grasses, orange marigolds and 
     pink and purple lilacs ``planted'' in the soil.
       She said she now dusts her flowers twice a week.
                                  ____


              [From the Albuquerque Journal, July 7, 2002]

                          It's Like the Sahara

                         (By Leslie Linthicum)

       Life-draining drought drives ranchers on Navajo reservation 
     to sell off gaunt livestock.
       About 200 people filled the stands of the Naschitti 
     Livestock Association arena on the eastern edge of the Navajo 
     reservation last week, waiting for the start of what was 
     being billed as a ``drought reduction'' cattle sale.
       Livestock auctions usually take place on the reservation in 
     September and October, when sheep and cattle are fat.
       But this is a year when the reservation is baking in one of 
     the worst droughts anyone can remember, and hundreds of 
     cattle, horses and sheep have already died. This year, 
     emergency sales have been cropping up almost every weekend.
       In a place where harmony is prized and people live close to 
     the land, hot afternoon winds carry fear and uneasiness as 
     the landscape becomes ever drier and prayers for rainfall go 
     unanswered. Stock ponds have gone dry, fish have died in 
     evaporating lakes, and grass has disappeared. Sand blows 
     across reservation roads, and the stiff bodies of dead cattle 
     liter the land.
       ``It's bad, really bad,'' said John Blueeyes, director of 
     the tribe's agriculture department. ``Mother Nature's not too 
     nice to us lately.''
       Sagebrush turns black.
       Livestock are not the only victims of the lingering 
     drought.
       Last week an elk cow wandered into The Gap, a community on 
     the edge of the Grand Canyon, desperate for water.
       She jumped a fence and sought relief in a sewage lagoon, 
     where she died and lay floating three days later.
       Many Farms Lake on the Arizona side of the reservation 
     usually spreads across about 1,500 acres, shimmering in the 
     summer sun and inviting fishermen to try their luck catching 
     bass and catfish.
       With no water flowing in the creeks and washes that feed 
     it, the lake has gone completely dry. It is now a 2\1/2\-
     square-mile, crackly graveyard for tens of thousands of fish.
       At the base of Gray Mountain just east of the Grand Canyon, 
     usually hardy sagebrush has turned black.
       Elsewhere, sand blows across highways in a rippling 
     reminder that rain is a distant memory. The last rain most 
     people can remember was last October.
       Last week on the two-lane highway that links Canyon de 
     Chelly to Monument Valley a road that sees plenty of 
     tourists' cars during the summer a front-end loader scooped 
     buckets of sand into dump trucks bound for a construction 
     site at a nearby community.
       Chancellor Damon, a heavy equipment contractor from Window 
     Rock, was doing the work under hire by the Bureau of Indian 
     Affairs to keep the road safe from sand dunes that had been 
     encroaching on the roadway since the spring.
       ``It's like the Sahara,'' Damon said. ``It's just been 
     windy, hot and dry.''
       Damon is a lifelong resident of the Navajo reservation and 
     is accustomed to huge winter snows in the mountains that hug 
     the New Mexico-Arizona border. Usually, a three-wheeler is 
     needed to make it through the snow. This year, passenger cars 
     had no trouble.
       ``Almost no snow. No rain whatsoever, It's bad,'' Damon 
     said.
       Hardship bargains
       Elderly women in velveteen blouses, ranchers in Wranglers 
     and toddlers in pint-sized straw hats helped to fill the 
     stands during a 100-degree afternoon at the livestock auction 
     while a handful of Anglo ranchers from out of state lined the 
     top row.
       The Navajos, out of water and feed, had come to sell.
       The cattlemen, fortunate to have rain and pasture grass in 
     Nebraska and Louisiana, were looking for some hardship 
     bargains.
       First, the invocation in Dine, the native language of the 
     Navajo: ``Please give us rain. Please give us moisture. Let 
     it be like it used to be grass green and high and rain every 
     day.''
       As the auction rolled on under a sizzling sun, stunted 
     calves and skinny cows were paraded in and sold.
       Some were to be fattened up in greener pastures; others 
     were bound directly for the slaughterhouse. Prices were 
     moderate and, considering that the cost of hay to continue 
     feeding the cows hovers between $6 and $11 a bale on the 
     reservation the auction satisfied both the buyers and the 
     sellers.
       The Becenti family from Naschitti had brought 30 calves and 
     cows to the auction. Three weeks ago they sold another group 
     of 30 cattle and sheep at an auction in Aztec.
       Ilene Becenti is reducing her herds by about 50 percent, 
     banking the money from the sales and hoping to buy more 
     animals once rains come.
       Like the rest of the animals on sale at Naschitti, 
     Becenti's animals are healthy; they are just much lighter 
     than they should be at this time, and it is costing more to 
     feed them as hay prices rise.
       ``There's no grass. It's completely dry,'' said Patricia 
     Arviso, Becenti's niece and one of the many family members 
     who look after the animals.
       ``When I was growing up,'' Arviso said, ``it never looked 
     like this.''
       Becenti is not in the ranching business to make money, and 
     she did not consider only economics when she made the 
     decision to sell.
       ``There's no rain, no grass. We don't want these animals to 
     suffer,'' she said.
       She will not, under the advice of some of the tribe's range 
     management specialists, sell all of her animals and wait out 
     the duration of this drought with no livestock.
       ``It makes you feel good if you have livestock around your 
     house. It's how we were raised,'' Becenti said. ``If you look 
     outside your house and you don't see cows and sheep and goats 
     and horses, it doesn't feel right. It's life to us.''
       Too many animals.
       About 700 cattle and horses were sold at Naschitti, less 
     than one-fifth of what the tribe's range management 
     specialists and tribal president had been hoping for.
       ``We want people to sell,'' said Blueeyes, of the tribe's 
     agriculture department.
       Rather than use hay to feed cows that are old, sick or not 
     reproducing, the agriculture department wants owners to thin 
     their herds dramatically, keeping only young and healthy 
     animals.
       The drought has brought into sharper focus an issue that 
     has troubled natural resource managers for a century: The 
     Navajo reservation, with so much land and so little 
     vegetation, is being eaten away by too many animals.
       The reservation is immense some 25,000 square miles spread 
     over northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona and 
     southeastern Utah. Range surveys have found large portions 
     where overgrazing and drought have combined to kill grass. 
     Without grass anchoring the soil, it blows away.
       As early as 1930, a federal survey described the Navajo 
     range as ``deteriorating rather steadily and more rapidly 
     each year.'' In 1933, tribal lawmakers approved a livestock 
     reduction plan that, carried out over one traumatic decade, 
     reduced the livestock on Navajo lands from 800,000 head to 
     about 460,000.
       Estimates of the number of sheep, cattle, goats and horses 
     on the reservation today vary between 100,000 and 200,000.
       They have symbolism that goes beyond their ability to 
     provide meat and transportation. Sheep and goats are an 
     integral part of family and ceremonial life; cattle are vital 
     to the Indian cowboy tradition; and Navajo elders believe 
     horses bring rain.
       Last week Navajo President Kelsey Bagaye issued a statement 
     to Navajos, imploring them to sell some of their animals.
       ``We need to help our Mother Earth recover so that it may 
     yield and sustain green pastures again in the future when 
     moisture comes to our land,'' Begaye said.
       ``Owning livestock,'' he said, ``is more a privilege and 
     gift than a right.''
       Grazing reforms have been suggested for years and never 
     enacted. Blueeyes expects Navajos will haul water and buy hay 
     for their animals and wait for rain to make things better, 
     but will not be open to discussions of limiting their herds 
     so the land can heal.
       ``It is the Navajo sacred cow,'' said Blueeyes. ``Nobody 
     wants to talk about it.''

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