Water Conservation In Doubtful Canyons Of Our Times

Amid this morning's booming thunder and downpour of liquid manna from the skies, I once again heard the too frequent horn and clack slaps of the freight cars, as the local CSX train barrels through town. Both are reminders, of two of the doubtful canyons of our times. It's at such times that I ask myself:

Do people know what happens when the trains don’t stop, and rain doesn’t come?

Certainly, the people who lived in Steins, New Mexico, less than one hundred years ago could tell us all a few things. There are lessons to be learned in the shadow of Steins Peak, a few miles east in one Doubtful Canyon. Unless you are an American southwest history buff, a ghost town aficionado, or a local -- it’s not likely you’ll know that part of New México, so let me tell you why what happened there is important to what's happening all over the world today.

It's more than a legend that Doubtful Canyon got it's name from the fact that Butterfield Stage Coaches and travelers of yesterday gone, faced a risk that once they entered that canyon.

To put it simply, it was doubtful that they would come out on the other side alive. This was Apache country and the cowboys and frontiers people didn't always win every battle.

As it often happened in Western states, during the time of gold rushes and prospecting, in an ever never ending quest for riches, rich deposits of precious metals and gemstones were found in the area, resulting in mining camps.

That lead to railroad tycoons jumping in the fray of the population, blasting away mountain tops to push the Southern Pacific Railroad through the area.

In one such Apache Indian attack in 1873, a cavalry leader, Captain Enoch Steins was killed, prompting the name of Doubtful Canyon to be re-named in his honor, Steins Pass.

Nearby, more than a thousand Chinese railroad workers made it possible for the railroad to establish a trading station in the area, along with a post office, and mercantile. With the miners and the railroaders came more people, but probably the most that every lived there were around thirteen hundred people.

By 1880, the place was sporting the name, Steins, New Mexico. There weren't a lot of people wanting to live there, for good reason. Despite a couple stores, a restaurant, a boarding house, two bordellos, a couple of saloons, and even a dance hall -- Steins, New Mexico lacked something very basic to sustaining human life -- a source of water.

With no source of water, the settlers in the shadow of Doubtful Canyon from the very beginning until to the bitter end, had to depend on the railroad to bring them precious water in barrels by train. A dollar barrel may not seem like much in today's world, but water was both a necessity and a luxury at the same time in this desert area.

The plug was pulled on Stein's water supply right after WWII, when the Southern Pacific Railroad made the decision to shut down the train station and stop delivering water. From the railroad's point of view it made sense as they switched from steam engines to diesel engines. There was simply no need for them to stop in Steins to replenish the water the engine needed. That was the end of Steins, New Mexico.

To make up for it, as if the railroad could right their wrong, they kindly offered the residents free transportation to anywhere on the railroad line they might want to go. Most took them up on the offer, walking away with no means to take with them their possessions. In time the few who stayed behind, eventually abandoned the town.

By 1945, there wasn't much left of the town. At one point, the town caught on fire, destroying most of the buildings. For many years, only one elderly man remained, who in turn sold the town the the current population of two, Larry and Linda Link. When Larry announced to his wife in 1988, that he'd just bought a ghost town and that they were selling their home and business to renovate it -- she thought he'd surely lost his mind.

After operating for a number of years, today it is closed down to the public for reasons unknown, which is a shame.

So maybe you can't go to Steins Ghost Town anymore, however, Doubtful Canyon and the little town of Steins, both have hugely important lessons to share with us.

Here in Florida, we are facing water shortages. This is nothing new, nor is it unique to the state of Florida, despite our heavy rainy season and hurricanes behaving as rudely as unwanted annual tourists.

Most Floridians (and Americans in general) usually only contemplate water shortages when it affects "their world," usually in the form of water restrictions. There are no happy campers when you can only water your lawn on certain days a week, can't wash your car, flush your toilet but once a day, or risk excessively high water usage bills or fines -- as this tends to make us all a little grumpy.

Yet, average Floridians and people in other states, don't think of the problem as permanent, or a sign of impending even worse water shortage problems. Maybe it's the "drought" part of the conversations, that crop up like frequent thunder storms that are usually of the too little, too late variety. We're all going to conserve water, the drought conditions will go away, better infrastructure will be built, new reservoirs will be built, and somehow it's all going to be alright without the efforts of everyone. Right?

Certainly, we shake our heads and then tune out the frequent news stories about water feuds in western states, like Arizona and California. We definitely don't see the big wave picture. The tsunami of global water shortage facts, like the reality that world-wide, with more than eighty countries now having severe water shortages -- also aren't a part of daily conversation.

Or, the fact mind-blowing numbers of over two billion people globally having no access to clean water -- all seem to be "someone else's problem." Few even understand that over thirty-six states now face major water shortages.

It's definitely off the majority of our radar screens in our poorly educated segments of the population, that many nations get their water from neighboring countries -- the same countries that they have hostile or non-existent relationships with.

You don't hear a lot of people talking about "water" being one of the key issues in the Middle East, where seventy-five percent of water must come across borders. Many of us are ignorant to the issues. We choose to think it's about differing religions, or about owning land -- when maybe it's really about something, so basic that people can't live without it -- drinking water. The truth is, the world's water supplies simply cannot keep up with the demand of ever-growing populations.

It seems a little ironic, as I look out our sliding glass doors, on the pristine view of a ghost town of a luxury housing development -- where those trying so desperately to turn around the real estate bust -- fail to grasp their role in our water shortage.

Today, it's pouring down much needed rain from the sky, yet the community irrigation/sprinkler system, is still and probably always will be, watering sidewalks, the road, driveways, and always on automatic schedule regardless of whether or not -- anyone has noticed -- it's raining. You don't need to water when it rains.

Once we had too much water in our swampland of a state, that we paved it over to build a fake paradise of developments and tourist attractions. We also built the mother-of-all irrigation canal systems, dikes, and dams. The unpaved land that is left, can't store water anymore in the annual rainy season. So, now instead of flowing back into natural aquifers, our precious water runs back out to the sea and there is very little we can do about it after-the-fact. It's either watch our liquid gold run away to sea, or we flood.

It's seems doubtful that we'll find out way out of our self built canyon. Without water to play in, and make pretty and have fun in -- perhaps the tourists will stop coming? Would we become one big giant ghost town after people and businesses leave in search of water? Will the last person in town, please remember to turn off the last remaining spigot?

Remember the Alamo? I say remember what happened in the shadow Doubtful Canyon.