Aquiferealists vs. Aquinuts

The Lewiston Tribune has been runnning a series about water issues on the Palouse. What follows below is a compilation of quotes (Aquiferealists in blue, Aquinuts in red) from several articles that were published in the Sunday issue of the Tribune, along with my comments:

King Solomon vs. Science:

"It's a little scary," says Mark Solomon, a longtime water watchdog and current hydrology doctoral student at the University of Idaho. "There is a looming water crisis."

Even with state-of-the-art technology, no amount of scientific probing will ever provide total understanding of the groundwater supply on the Palouse, says a University of Idaho hydrology and water quality professor.

"There are geophysical tools that you can use," Fritz Fiedler says of equipment designed to collect underground data. "But they aren't very accurate. And they don't work well in deep systems like we have. The main aquifer on the Palouse, which is the Grand Ronde, is about 1,000 feet deep."

"There's always going to be uncertainty that we're going to have to manage around," Fiedler says. So while more scientific data is desirable, cooperation between user groups and agencies is much more critical at this point.

"I don't think there's a looming crisis," Fiedler says. "I really don't think we're about to run dry by any means. But in the future, maybe 15 to 20 years out there, it's much harder to tell."

"I'm not saying the decisions will be here next year. I don't think the situation is that dire at all," [Jan] Boll [director of the Univeristy of Idaho Waters of the West graduate program] says. "But it's a planning process that we all need. And that's what our process is trying to develop."

In the meantime, Boll says no crisis is imminent. In fact, he says, the aquifers may be much deeper than realized at this point.

Surface water is plentiful. Reservoirs could be built. Treated runoff could be injected into the aquifers. The technology is even available to pump and pipe water from the major rivers to the south. While perhaps costly alternatives, Boll says the availability of water is more than adequate for the region.

One thing for certain, warns Boll, no amount of scientific investigation will ever provide enough answers to erase all questions about how much water is available. "The thing we need to come to grasp with is the uncertainty we will always have. There is always going to be uncertainty about how much water is left and how much we can keep pumping."

I think in this case I'll go with the professors over the "student." And since there is no way we will ever know how much water is left in the aquifer, it only seems logical to implement thoughtful conservation measures and develop economical alternatives versus the radical growth-killing solutions advocated by King Solomon and his Knights of the Water Table.

Larry Kirkland vs. Bill French

Larry Kirkland, former PBAC executive secretary, counters that there is no shortage. "The water is here. It's just a question of how we can get it."

Enough precipitation, for example, falls on the Palouse to make the shortage debate moot, say Kirkland and other experts. They contend capturing runoff in reservoirs or injecting treated surface water into underground aquifers, while costly, would meet future demands.

Kirkland, after leaving PBAC and being able to observe the big picture, warns that fears about lack of water can be used as both political and legal levers. "Water can become sort of a spotted owl to establish what you want as far as social engineering."

The spotted owl became the focus of national attention decades ago when
conservation groups used the bird's endangered species status to block logging of old-growth forests.

The potential for alternative water sources aside, [Bill] French [of the Palouse Water Conservation Network] says there's something "obscene" about the current situation. "I just think it's ethically wrong to take a 20,000-year-old resource like pristine groundwater that got into the ground during the last ice age and dump it on lawns or flush it down toilets."

"Obscene? ""Ethically wrong?" Kirkland is right. The Aquinuts ARE comparing the "pristine 20,000 year old water" to a living creature like the spotted owl to block growth on the Palouse. Let's illuminate Mr. French about the water cycle, shall we?


There will never be any more freshwater on Earth than there is now. No new water is being made and water can’t escape from the Earth. The water we use is recycled over and over again. It is never "destroyed." It just changes states or moves somewhere else. So that "pristine" water that got into the Grande Ronde aquifer during the last ice age was on the Earth's surface for hundreds of millions of years in various forms (clouds, rain, snow, ice, rivers, oceans) before that. And when it gets to the surface again to water your lawn or flush your toilet, it will stay around for hundreds of millions of more years before going back into the ground, into the ocean, etc. Water is not a living creature that can die off and go extinct forever. That same water will be here long after we are dead and gone. Arguing over water on the Palouse is as silly as arguing over dirt would be. If we can't get water from the aquifer, we'll get it from somewhere else. As the scientists above stated, this is a region that has ample water supplies through rainfall, snowfall, and rivers.

Proof that the Aquinuts are all about anti-capitalist socialism and not water conservation (as if their rejection of any proposal to recharge the aquifer or build reservoirs isn't enough proof) comes from this April 2003 Moscow Co-Op newsletter (notice that Spokane attorney Rachael Paschal Osborn, who is leading the legal fight against the WSU golf course, was at the meeting being reported on:)

...the idea that a community can only thrive with unlimited growth and development is a notion that must disappear, hopefully before the water does.

Post-World War II economy was based on a planned scheme for consumerism—and it worked. The economy grew, people consumed and planned obsolescence became an accepted norm. We become anxious when we consider voluntary reductions of any type. But, we must begin to imagine a “restorative economy” where having less is truly more satisfying, more interesting, and of course, more secure.

In the relatively near future, we must achieve a balance between what we are consuming and the capacity of the earth’s ecosystems to provide, according to author and businessman Paul Hawken. “We need to create an economy… that is not an either/or argument, but a means to create the best life for the greatest number of people precisely because we do not know the eventual outcome or impact of our current industrial practices. In other words, we need an economy based on more humility.”

Bill French vs. Michael Echanove

Not that PBAC would curb pumping if it could, suggests French, who likens the pumping entities to foxes guarding the henhouse. "I think the whole concept of PBAC is flawed. I think PBAC was mostly formed to have the appearance of doing something. And it kind of fooled the state of Idaho into not stepping in to regulate water."

"The state of Idaho has a couple of designations they can put on a groundwater basin," explains French. His and other groups, in fact, waded in amid the Naylor flap to petition the Idaho Department of Water Resources to intercede and regulate pumping from both the Wanapum and Grand Ronde.

After another round of hearings, the state backed away in favor of a local solution. That solution, suggested by the IDWR, was to form an 11-member citizens group to offer advice to the 19 representatives of PBAC. The group, says French, had the potential to be a watchdog over PBAC. "But in practice, it (the citizens group) has just become a mirror image of PBAC. It's a group of people who get together once a month and talk about stuff but they never do anything."

Michael Echanove, chairman of the citizens group as well as mayor of Palouse, disagrees with French's assessment of PBAC.

More regulatory authority, however, isn't needed, Echanove says. What's needed is more scientific data about just how big and how full or empty the aquifers really are. "Until we get that data, it's just a bunch of people with opinions. And you've got universities that have their own projects. You've got counties that have their projects. I mean, I could make a career just thinking about it."

The politics of Palouse water, Echanove says, are perhaps best illustrated by the differing opinions of his mayoral counterparts in Pullman and Moscow.

"Remember, you've got to get elected. And you've got to be able to lead and you've got to be able to look at the big picture, as such, and you can't come in with one opinion and run with it, because you're not going to get anywhere."

Yes, the Aquinuts would love nothing more than to have an unelected body of envirocrats, who would of course have to buy into the idea of "looming water crisis," to beat back every new big-box store, golf course, highway, or housing project on the Palouse.

The fact remains that PBAC HAS been successful, greatly reducing water usage on the Palouse since 1992 (8.3% less than was pumped in 2006 than in 1992) through VOLUNTARY guidelines.

Nancy Chaney vs. Glenn Johnson

Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney was accused of social engineering when she leaped across the state line into Washington to legally challenge water rights for development of the proposed Hawkins Companies shopping center.

She defends her actions as an attempt to ensure water "sustainability."

"I come from a scientific background," says Chaney, who holds a master's degree in environmental science. "I get the scientific principle. I understand objectivity. But having entered the realm of politics, I've sort of straddled that line."

Ultimately, newly elected members of the Moscow City Council usurped Chaney's political power by agreeing to not just abandon the legal appeals, but to actually supply water to Hawkins.

Chaney laments that while the politics of water continue to vacillate, the groundwater supply will continue to drop. "It's certainly political. I think we should be informed by science, but there are competing interests. So we're sort of waiting out a cost-benefit analysis. We're looking at long-term and short-term values and things we can afford to gamble with and things we cannot afford. Unfortunately, political cycles don't coincide with natural resource needs."

Eight miles away in Pullman, Mayor Glenn Johnson declines comment on Chaney's tactics. "To be honest with you, I'm leaving that one alone."

As for the politics of water on the Washington side of the border, Johnson suggests they're quite different than in Idaho, and especially Moscow. "What we're trying to do is, we're not going to discourage growth over here. We're telling everybody that 'Yes, we know we have adequate water supplies, we've had plenty of research on that. But at the same time, we want you to conserve. We want to make sure you watch your use of water.' So that's the message."

Chaney comes from a "scientific background?" Oh, brother. She's a nurse, for God's sake. The only line she is straddling is the line between San Francisco hippie and all-out barking moonbat. The Queen's "realm of politics" will be over next year. meanwhile, Mayor Johnson's pragmatic political views have earened him two unopposed terms in office.

"Socio-Cultural Characteristics of the Palouse Basin"

You're really going to enjoy this particular piece of professorial fluffery. It demonstrates considerable academic laziness, liberal bias, greatly oversimplified generalizations, and a general surrender to popular stereotypes. It's from the Palouse Basin Community Water Resource Information System, part of the Water Resources Program at the University of Idaho which provides a "platform for cross-disciplinary analyses of water resources sustainability within the eastern Palouse Basin watershed of western Latah County, Idaho, and eastern Whitman County, Washington."

I have highlighted what I consider the biased parts below:

A large proportion of rural residents in the area, especially those living outside of its population centers, were born in the Basin. Their customs and lifestyles are typical of those found in rural areas of the West, in that they tend to have resource-based and land-production occupations, and are comparatively more conservative in their values and perspectives. One crude indicator of this social characteristic is the number of campaign contributions made by residents of Colfax, WA, in the 2004 election: all but one were made to the Republican Party or its candidates – in a state where a minority (46%) of voters voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

However, in the Idaho portion of the basin’s rural areas, an exception is that some proportion of rural landowners either are faculty of the two universities or professionals attracted to the university-town of Moscow, and thus comparatively more liberal and affluent than their neighbors -- or they are even more liberal residents who have been attracted to the area as part of the back-to-the-land movement that began in the 1970's. One indicator of this social characteristic is the proportion of voters in Latah County that voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election – 50% -- in contrast to a state in which a majority voted for Bush (69%).

It might also be noted that a major segment of the Moscow and rural Latah County population, given a more liberal political orientation and the fact that they have come from other more populated, congested and poorly planned areas of the country, are more concerned than other residents with growth management and the use of government and public policy to advance economic and community development in a way that they see as being progressive and well-planned. Some are opposed to certain kinds of economic activity (e.g., "big-box" retail stores) and have been labeled by others as "anti-growth."

In contrast, some residents of the Basin, especially in rural Whitman County, are more conservative in their beliefs and preferences, and some (including many farmers in the region) are among the region’s most conservative, especially in comparison to their fellow citizens on the "west-side" of the state of Washington and in Latah County. These individuals tend to believe that the less government involvement in citizens’ lives, the better, and they espouse principles of free-market economics, despite the subsidies that some receive from the federal government. Of particular relevance for water resource management, they are generally in favor of community development through increased economic activity (i.e., "pro-growth"), and would like to see their communities grow in terms of the basic industries and retail outlets available for local services, consumer choices and purchasing options, and general local prosperity, through the jobs, income and economic expansion generated.

So, I guess we can interpret from that we conservatives are in favor of "poor planning" and "wasting water?"

And while there is some truth to this assessment, categorizing people as "anti-growth" and "pro-growth" by who voted for Bush and who voted for Kerry is embarassingly simplistic, insulting, and just plain wrong.

I know MANY Democrats who are in favor of Wal-Mart in Pullman. Pullman is around 55% Democrat, and yet Judy Krueger of PARD lost overwhelmingly in the 2005 city council race. I'm sure many of those folks who voted against Krueger voted for Kerry the year before.

Moscow is also strongly Democratic, yet the city council members who opposed big boxes were thrown out en masse last November. The same council that approved the Hawkins water deal went on a few weeks later to uphold a controversial measure granting health benefits to "domestic partners" of city workers, including those of the same sex, in violation of Idaho law. "Conservative?" You tell me.

On the flip side, I know of many conservatives who strongly oppose big-box stores in both Pullman and Moscow. And Whitman County is not underdeveloped because the Democrats have been in control all these years. Whitman County government has largely been a Democrat-free zone for a long time. No, it is in large part due to those farmers mentioned above who fear suburban development intruding into rural areas. In Pullman, it was business owners that chased away the Palouse Mall.

Until recently, Democratic Latah County had been the center of retail and housing development on the Palouse. Republican Whitman County had developed the anti-growth reputation. The opposition to big boxes is a coalition that spans political parties, the unholy alliance of liberal fascists and NIMBYists. The common thread with each group is that they want the government to decide what other people can do with their land. The NIMBYists just tend to be a little more quiet about it.

As an information system for those making decision about water, this seems to be a very poor resource. You would think they could do their homework and conduct some meaningful surveys on political attitudes about growth on the Palouse. They probably wouldn't like what they found.