I also had the pleasure of running through the sprinkler with The Coranator. Yes, our hosts sometimes call their 20-month-old daughter, Cora, the Coranator. After spending an afternoon with her, watching as she fell (on her cute little face a couple of times), ran around in the hot sun, and withstand the spray from her brother’s supersoaker, I understood why: she’s one tough kid.

Anyhoo, this is one of my favorite recent photos, so I thought I would share it with you. You can find another picture of Cora, this one of her adorable face, here.

What this means for his district is entirely up in the air right now. Following what I can only describe as the fiasco that took place when filling Manny Herrera’s seat, finding somebody to represent the area for the remainder of Benny’s term should be an interesting affair indeed.

The Silver City Daily Press ran an article yesterday quoting the long-time senator; I’ll see if I can track down when the interview occurred.

More later.

Following the event, we ran into Martin Heinrich at a local bar. The meeting was very informal, but Heinrich seemed, to me, to have a good grasp of the issues that might decide the upcoming election. He knew that the Iraq War is still a major concern for voters in his district, and he espoused some wonderfully progressive ideas about the role of bloggers and new media. Chatting with a few Internet types, he was able to talk the lingo and knew how important a campaign’s online capacity is to success. He also said New Mexico is uniquely positioned to play a role in creating an energy-independent United States. I found him to be a very knowledgeable candidate on a variety of topics, and he’s a fan of Silver City: he said he made his decision to run for Congress while on vacation there.

Most important was Heinrich’s stance on the issue of FISA (and general democracy in America) – it’s very family-oriented, and spoken from the heart. You’ll see more about it in the coming days, but his desire to set things right is tangible. It bodes well for a strong progressive showing in New Mexico’s First Congressional District.

Well, I’m no longer in New Mexico, but I still had that wonderful 505 area code.

Until this morning:

When Heath Haussamen talks about people outside of Albuquerque and Santa Fe feeling ignored, this is what he means.

Anyhoo, update your address books accordingly.

New Mexico’s water math isn’t adding up. Real water plus paper water are supposed to equal water supply, but it doesn’t, especially during drought.

Real water: That’s wet water, the stuff one needs for drinking, washing clothes, growing food, building houses and cooling power plants.

Paper water: The piece of paper that says how much real water someone has the legal right to use.

The problem: New Mexico has more paper water than real water.

The result: Someone is going to go thirsty.

This has to be taken into consideration when entities are divvying up water. This might also be of particular concern for residents in southwest New Mexico in regard to the Arizona Water Settlements Act.

[Haussamen]: The benefits of the online format are immediacy, depth and multimedia opportunities. I can publish articles that don’t run in newspapers until the next day. I can have a written article accompanied by photos, video, comments, links to other sites that contain more information, etc. The possibilities are nearly endless. And the only space constriction is the attention span of the readers. So there’s more opportunity for exploring the complexities of issues than in print or on television.

Heath is an incredible asset to the state, and especially to residents in Southern New Mexico. His prediction that Doña Ana County may one day rival Bernalillo in size is a bold one, but he makes the case. If it comes to pass, he’s going to be primed to take advantage of the increased importance of the area.

In addition, Heath is a great advocate for increased openness in government and reducing the role of corporate money in politics, and who can’t get behind those principles?

His site should be daily reading, and I hope you’ll give him a read if you haven’t already. You can always find his latest headlines in my sidebar, though you’d do well to bookmark him or add his site to your feed reader.

Robert H. “Bob” Johnson, a champion for open government and a former Associated Press executive who, during a 42-year career, wrote AP’s first bulletin on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, has died. He was 84.

After retiring from the news cooperative in 1988, Johnson helped start the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government and made a new career out of fighting for public access to government meetings and records.

I first worked with Bob when I was editor of the Mustang. I was a complete rookie in the journalism business, but Bob didn’t care — he was incredibly helpful and insightful. During the past four years, that’s how I always encountered Bob: I had some question about access to public records, and he’d tell me about the applicable statutes or give me a comment for print.

In a time when our lives are under increased scrutiny, and when our privacy is at risk, it’s a sad blow to New Mexicans that their greatest champion in checking government power has gone so soon.

Thank you, Bob, for everything.

Actually, I never crossed the border. I came close a few times, but, well, I had other things to do. The story isn’t quite live on the Daily Press site yet (UPDATE: it is now) but here’s a PDF (Border Issues Part 1).

Oh, and Gold Star for Laura!

Severe dryness across California and Arizona has spread into other Western states. On the Colorado River, the water supply for 30 million people in seven states and Mexico, the Lake Powell and Lake Mead reservoirs are only half-full and unlikely to recover for years. In Los Angeles County, on track for a record dry year with 21% of normal rain downtown since last summer, fire officials are threatening to cancel Fourth of July fireworks if conditions worsen. On Wednesday, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa urged residents to voluntarily cut water use 10%, the city’s first such call since the 1990s.

What does that have to do with Arizona, or, for that matter, New Mexico? According to the Arizona Republic:

After a long decline punctuated by mine closures and layoffs, Arizona’s copper industry is making an unprecedented comeback.

Soaring metals prices have companies scrambling to open mines and expand existing ones to take advantage of the boom.

But mines consume huge amounts of water and could put tremendous pressure on the state’s limited water supply.

Water regulators, county planners and environmentalists are increasingly worried about the effect on aquifers, already suffering from decades of overpumping.

At least seven new mining projects are being planned around the state, and that doesn’t count the ongoing expansion of existing mines. The new projects will require 40,000 acre-feet of water annually. That’s enough to support a city larger than Tempe.

That’s enough water for 200,000 people each year, and, in an area already plagued by water shortages, will be a tough pill to swallow.

But, we still haven’t answered the question of New Mexico’s involvement. Well, the answer is simple, really: the Gila River.

If you recall, at the end of the last legislative session Gov. Bill Richardson line-item-vetoed a provision to fund a study of the Gila and San Francisco rivers. The study was tied to the Arizona Water Settlements Act, which provides New Mexico with 14,000 acre-feet of water per year from the Gila River. Right now, that water goes to Arizona.

At Silver City’s Town Council meeting on Tuesday, Mayor James Marshall reiterated a desire to see the studies move forward.

“The only way to protect that river is to study it and argue with facts that are grounded in science,” Marshall said.

He also told the council that the Interstate Stream Commission is still working to develop support for the studies, and that the Sandia Modeling team is also making additional progress on that front.

14,000 acre-feet of water is 1/3 of what the seven Arizona mines will be using, and I imagine Arizonans would be happy to keep getting that water. That threat has always been present, but the thought that Arizona cities will now be 40,000 acre-feet drier than before makes the threat that much more real.

Bonus: check out this Alibi story on Albuquerque’s shift away from aquifer water for drinking and other household use to San Juan/Chama River water ((Hat tip to John for the link)). The story is especially interesting in the context of last year’s news that the Mangas aquifer, which supplies the drinking water for much of Grant County, has a huge amount of water in it, and is continuously replenished by the Gila River. Turns out people used to say the same thing about Albuquerque’s aquifer:

This boundless body of water was going to support our city for generations to come. And it would be another decade before the dream was proven false.

The catalyst for our shift in understanding came in 1992 with a study published by hydrologists J.W. Hawley and C.S. Haase entitled A Hydrological Framework of the Northern Albuquerque Basin . The study showed that the reservoir beneath Albuquerque was not, after all, one giant pod filled with water, but a fractured network of water-filled vessels, some easier to reach than others, some with impure water.

Additionally, prior to the study the Rio Grande and the aquifer were thought to be directly linked. The city purchased San Juan-Chama water in 1963 with the intention of using the river water as an offset to Albuquerque’s groundwater pumping. The San Juan-Chama water was diverted to the Rio Grande, and the theory went that the extra water from the river would seep back into the aquifer, replenishing much of what the city pumped out every year. The Hawley and Haase study, however, showed the aquifer-river connection was somewhat weak. Although the river still replenished the aquifer, it did so at a much slower rate than previously thought.

The problem with Grant County is the lack of competition. Each outlet between Hurley and Silver City (and I’ve driven to Hurley a few times in the past week) is selling regular unleaded for $3.55 a gallon. Every single station.

The lack of competition has always been a sore point for residents in the area, and something we’ve tried to address in our articles in the past. In February, my colleague Mary Alice Murphy spoke to several retailers and a distributor to discuss prices. One retailer said Silver City is too competitive:

The owner of another station said the reason why the price is the same throughout the town is “because it’s so competitive. If I dropped the price a nickel a gallon or if another station did, everyone in town would match it by the end of the day.”

The price in February rose from $2.29 per gallon at the beginning of the month to $2.49 at the end of the month (with each station keeping pace with the trend setters as prices went up).

Another colleague, Jim Owen, wrote an article last Thursday highlighting the high gas prices. Residents aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch — school districts and local governments are increasing their budgets for next year because of rising fuel costs. The price-per-gallon when he wrote the article that morning: $3.36. By Friday, it had risen to the current record-high $3.55 a gallon. Since January, this is what the price has done, according to figures from AAA New Mexico:

I spoke with Phil Sisneros, spokesman for Attorney General Gary King on Thursday afternoon. Sisneros said fuel prices are affected by a variety of factors, including weather, foreign affairs and international incidents, and federal action.

However, Sisneros said, the issue is on King’s radar:

“We’re looking at it fairly closely right now. We’re getting a lot of calls though the consumer protection division, and we’ve been telling people we’re looking into the matter. Gary is definitely trying to find out if it is something we can work on.”

Sisneros said King was interested in the problem “because it is such a big issue for everyone.”

If you feel so obliged, you can visit the Consumer Protection Division Web site here, or call toll free: 1-800-678-1508.

I don’t have much to add to all this. If you can, walk more and drive less. The weather is great for that right now. Carpool if you can! Elect leaders that will enact sound energy policies, not develop them with energy companies behind closed doors. Visit Treehugger for green-living tips, to help reduce the amount of energy you use.