By: Danielle Prokop
Source NM Congress held a hearing on six historic water right settlements for tribes and Pueblos on four rivers in New Mexico last week, which would bring $3.7 billion dollars for water projects, restoration and more. The settlements address the Rio San José, the Rio Jemez, Rio Chama and the Zuni River. There are also bills for technical changes to two existing agreements, and extending funding for the Navajo-Gallup water project. Zuni River H.R. 8951 would settle litigation between the federal government, the state of New Mexico and the Pueblo of Zuni regarding the Zuni River stream system in Western New Mexico. It is sponsored by Rep. Gabe Vasquez. There are still outstanding lawsuits by the Navajo Nation in the Zuni basin. The settlement would establish $655.5 million in mandatory spending for a Zuni Tribe Water Rights Settlement Trust Account. – $29.6 million will go towards a trust fund for maintenance, operation and replacement – $750,000 in state funding from New Mexico for water monitoring and $500,000 to mitigate non-Indian domestic groundwater rights because of tribal usage. – $50 million in funding for economic water development plans, environmental compliance costs, design costs and establishing a water resource department Another portion of the settlement will establish a 217,000 acre sanctuary and the withdrawal of 92,364 federal land from entry, appropriation or type of mineral leasing. The land will be managed by Bureau of Land Management and prohibits new water wells, grazing permits, timber sales and fossil collecting. Another 4,756 acres will be placed into a “Tribal Acquisition Area Trust” which will now be managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The remaining legislation is sponsored by Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández. Rio San José and Rio Jemez H.R. 1304 creates two funds, settling multiple lawsuits. – The Rio San José Settlement allocates 7,982 acre-feet per year for Acoma Pueblo and 12,263 acre feet per year for the Laguna Pueblo from both groundwater and surface water sources. The settlement establishes a $850 million. – The state of New Mexico will provide $36 million for non-Indian water users. – The Rio Jemez Settlement allocates 6,055 acre feet per year to Jemez Pueblo and 3,699 acre feet per year to Zia Pueblo. It would establish a fund for both tribal governments with $490 million. In addition to federal money, the state of New Mexico will provide $20 million for non-Indian water users. Ohkay Owingeh Rio Chama water rights settlement H.R.8685 adjudicates the Rio Chama for the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. There are outstanding water rights claims on the Rio Grande that are not settled in the legislation. $745 million goes to the Ohkay Owingeh Water Rights Settlement Trust Fund. The state of New Mexico would contribute $131 million for water development projects. The settlement agreement codifies Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo’s water rights for additional irrigation, using water for watering livestock and wildlife, use for drinking water and wastewater and groundwater uses. Rio San José Navajo Nation The bill H.R.8945 will settle the Navajo Nation water rights in the Rio San José Basin in New Mexico. It is the counterpart to H.R. 1304. It creates a settlement trust fund of $223 million in mandatory funding. The state of New Mexico would contribute $5 million. Technical corrections H.R. 6599 offers technical corrections to the settlements with Taos Pueblo and the Aamodt litigation. The federal government made a mistake and incorrectly invested funds in settlement accounts. After the mistake was found the federal government was required by law to send any interest on those funds to the Treasury. This bill would return the $18.5 million in interest to the tribes. – $7.79 million would go to the Taos Pueblo Water Development Fund – $4.3 million for the Aamodt Settlement Pueblos’ Fund – $6.35 million to the Navajo Nation Water Resources Development Trust Fund. Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project Finally, H.R. 3977, extends the deadline for the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project to 2029. The project consists of two pipelines, two water treatment plants and several pumping stations to bring San Juan River water to Gallup, the Navajo Nation and surrounding communities. The project is a key provision in a Navajo Nation water rights settlement on the San Juan River Basin in New Mexico, and that settlement will not take effect until construction is completed. The bill will provide another $725 million to finish the project, putting the total bill to $2.1 billion. Those new funds include: – $689.45 million to address a gap in how much the project costs – $30 million for Navajo Nation connections on the water transmission line – $6.25 million for renewable energy features H.R. 3977 also establishes $250 million for operations, management and repairs for the Navajo Nation and $10 million in a similar trust fund for the Jicarilla Apache Nation.
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By Jessica Rath For about eight years now, the Abiquiú News has provided us with the Bloom Blog. From April through October, Marilyn Phillips helps us to identify the many wildflowers growing around Abiquiú and informs us of the various uses Native Americans have for these plants: as remedies for ailments and diseases, as dyes, as skin lotions, and as food. It’s always nice to put a face to the name, isn’t it. And I always like to learn a bit more about a person with an obvious mission, who is passionate about what they do. When I asked her, Marilyn agreed to meet with me and take me on a flower walk, telling me a bit about herself while helping me to identify the various wildflowers that had popped up in early June. Because I learned British English at school when I grew up in Germany, I could spot Marilyn’s accent: she must be from the United Kingdom. Sure enough, she grew up in London. Her father was a gardener who planted delicious vegetables and beautiful flowers. While she feels that she didn’t inherit his green thumb, she credits him and his garden for her love of flowers. Although she was a city kid and clearly didn’t have many wildflowers growing nearby, she was always interested in the outdoors and nature. As a Guide – the equivalent to a Girl Scout in the U.S. – Marilyn spent a lot of time outside, went on camping trips and hikes, etc. But her involvement with wildflowers got really serious after she moved to Crested Butte, the Wildflower Capital of Colorado – they even have an annual Wildflower Festival which lasts for ten days! “It's just a stunningly beautiful place”, Marilyn told me. “And I got involved. I went on a wildflower hike with the Wildflower Festival that they have every July. And I realized that I really liked this. That’s why I did another one. And then eventually, long story short, I got involved with the Festival and ended up leading hikes myself within a couple of years”. I once spent a few days in Crested Butte and totally understand Marilyn’s enthusiasm. It is indeed striking. Nestled near the 12,168-foot summit of the Crested Butte Mountain, it has become a popular ski resort with lots of fun activities for the short snowless season: there’s an International Film Festival, a yearly Arts Festival, there are live concerts, and endless offers for outdoor pursuits such as mountain biking, river rafting, and horseback riding. Did you know that Crested Butte was a coal mining town in the late 19th century? When the coal mines closed, the town declined somewhat, until the construction of a ski area in the 1960s. Ever since then, the tourism business has guaranteed a booming economy. Back to the Bloom Blog! Marilyn had always been interested in photography, and on her wildflower hikes she took a lot of flower pictures. “That led to identifying the flowers; I had some really good guides on these hikes who identified everything. I have a good memory and I remember them. So yes, everything just sort of evolved from living in that particular place”. Marilyn continued: “The winters there were quite intense sometimes, when one has to spend a lot of time inside because it is too cold and dark outdoors. One winter I started sorting out my photographs, and I realized I had 1000s of them. I started putting names on them and sorted them out and deleted some, after which I ended up with about 250 different species of flowers. And I thought, well, I should do something with this. This was before the internet, to give you some perspective”. “This was in the mid-90s, and all the pictures I took were on slides. There was nothing digital yet. My background is in computer science, and so I made a CD. Its purpose was to identify the flowers, so you could do a search. It looked very similar to the website that exists now. I haven't changed it much from that original CD, which I think was published in the early 2000s. When the Internet came out, I got a website, and that's the one that's still going”. In 2012, Marilyn moved to Abiquiú. And in 2016 the Bloom Blog was added to the Abiquiú News as well as to Marilyn’s website: Wildflowers of the Southern Rocky Mountains. Check it out, it’s really useful if you want to find a particular flower: one can search by name, both common and Latin, by descriptive words, and – the easiest way – by color. “It is different here from Colorado”, Marilyn explained to me. “In Colorado, you'll get one hundred blooms a week. Here, you'll get one or two or three or five, at the peak, in May and June. It would be impossible to do something like the bloom blog in Colorado because there are way too many flowers. It's stupendous, the flowers there – but the growing season is very short. We're talking about elevations above 9,000 feet. So there’s lots of moisture from the snow melt because a typical winter brings dozens of feet of snow”. I looked it up, the average snowfall in January is 42.2 inches. And it sometimes snows in June and September. No wonder the flowers try to get the most out of the short growing season! “The snow starts melting in May. That's changing, of course, because of climate change. But generally, in June, everything just starts exploding. The first two weeks of July are the peak. On some of the hikes that I led there, I could identify over 100 flowers on a two-hour walk. It was stupendous and I loved it. So, when I came to Abiquiú, of course I was still looking for flowers, but I did not find quite so many of them. And they were all different, because it's such a different environment. You know, this is high desert. It's very different ecologically, the flowers are also limited by the river, it’s a whole different set. Anyway, it's an evolutionary thing. When I started the Bloom Blog in 2016 I tried to find a different flower every week, one that I hadn't written about before”. “Everywhere I go I take my camera with me. I still go out hiking on trails, but there's not anywhere near the diversity of plants here that there is in Colorado. Of course we still have a huge number of flowers. I think there are over 200 that I found in this area. I start in April and go through September. I used to go through October but there's not much left then, just the odd sagebrush”. I mentioned to Marilyn that I used to live in Coyote, and there it's again very different from here. When I went on hikes there, I always found lots of wildflowers. She agreed. “Sure, there would be more flowers. What we have here around Abiquiú is called a piñon sagebrush environment, plants that grow in a hot and dry climate. But Coyote is about 1,000 feet higher, and that would make a huge difference”. “So, have you ever done any kind of guided tours here, walking tours like you did in Colorado?” I asked. Marilyn’s answer makes sense, of course: “No, there aren’t enough wildflowers. And I'm older as well. In Colorado I used to do major hiking in the mountains but I couldn't do that anymore. Also, I’d say the area here doesn't really lend itself for hiking tours because when the flowers are blooming, which is mainly in May and June, it's too hot during the day. There are no trees like you had in Coyote; you could go hiking during the day and you’d have shade, right? Well, when you have the piñons and the junipers there’s no shade. Piñon and juniper trees are too short. Along the river here we've got the cottonwoods and that's lovely. But often you can't really walk next to the river, there are no trails”. “When I first moved to Abiquiú I walked down my road, and found lots of flowers just growing by the roadside. But there are few trails here, and they're not the sort of places where you would take a group of people”. I was curious: “Did you ever get into mushrooms?” I asked. “No way. In Colorado, there's tons of mushrooms, but it's a very different activity. And it's kind of dangerous, I think. Even in my blog: I often talk about medicinal uses that the Native Americans had for flowers. But hopefully people realize that those were traditional Native American uses, and they won't go off and try some of these things. Although they've researched it a bit. But mushrooms – they can be deadly”. “And the other thing is that they grow for only a short period, and this varies depending on the weather. They need the right rain. There was actually a mushroom festival in Crested Butte, which was held towards the end of August, which makes sense. But then one year the mushrooms all came out in July because we had an exceptional amount of rain. So by the time the festival came around, there were no mushrooms!. They had to cancel the festival. Mushrooms are a bit unpredictable”. And then Marilyn mentions something I had never thought about, but it has stuck with me ever since.
“There is one special thing I love about flowers: it is their continuity. I'm going to the same place every year to meet the same flower. They are so reliable! It gives me faith to know that Mother Nature can keep going, despite all the craziness around us. ‘Oh, look, there's that flower that was blooming last year!’ Most of the flowers that survive here have to be perennial, meaning that they come back year after year. Their roots have to be really deep to reach what little moisture there is. So consequently, the same plant will be in the same place next year. And so, you know, they become like friends”. Isn’t that a lovely thought! I hope we’ll all walk around from now on, greeting the many faithful friends all around us, that we so easily overlook. And let’s include all the trees as well in our new and larger circle of friends. Thank you, Marilyn, for an enjoyable and inspiring conversation. Markets are in transition. Which is to say we are still in a Bull Market for stocks but in a seasonal transitionary period for the next 2-3 months. August - October tend to see the worst market performance of the year. Then the latter part of the year, late October through the end of the year, tend toward positive performance. It doesn’t have to happen this way but it’s statistically likely. How much in each direction is the variable no one can predict. Especially this year with an election coming up.
In all honesty, presidential elections have had a marginal effect on markets historically. It’s almost as if markets say “We don’t care who gets elected, just leave us alone!” But this year we are facing interest rate cuts, presumably in September and again in October or November. Lower rates are good for stock markets generally. But are especially good for bonds. Which is to say bond prices go up when interest rates go down. This is because bonds have fixed rates, and when interest rates in general go down, your fixed rate bonds having higher rates become more valuable. Think of it this way: if you own a 6% fixed rate bond today, and interest rates go down so that a similar new bond only yields 5%, your 6% bond automatically becomes more desirable. More desirable means higher price. So quality bonds as part of your portfolio may well be the best way to ride out the next few months, if not the next year. If you’re investing in mutual funds as opposed to individual bonds, look at quality intermediate to longer term bond funds. They will react the best to lower interest rates. Just in: Fed Chair Powell just spoke (on Wednesday) and indicated there could be as many as 3 rate cuts this year. This is really exciting news and very favorable for the strategy discussed above. Questions or comments contact Peter J Nagle Thoughtfulincome@gmail.com |
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