As I write this a light rain is falling. Even if a couple of inches were to fall, it is too late for this year’s crop. Pastures will benefit, but it’s too late for cattlemen who have already sold part of their herds. One man was heard to say that he used to get four bales per acre, but now it takes four acres to make one bale. Someone even reported the hay he’d cut and baled in a ditch had been stolen.
We wanted to take a weekend trip and drive to Minnesota’s Gooseberry Falls but a news report told us water wasn’t flowing this summer. A recent newsreel exposed the Ottertail River’s muddy bottom and a man who runs a concession renting float tubes had to take a carpentry job.
An excellent book came to mind in the midst of the present conditions. Elmer Kelton’s award winning ‘The Time It Never Rained’ told of the tensions that grew in a ranch family who were in the midst of a severe drought. I never met Kelton even though we both belonged to the same Western Writers of America organization. He passed away a couple years before I joined, but he is held in high esteem by members who did know him. In the book, the central character met a foe that opposed him in forms of the drought and the “help” of federal aid programs.
It is a time of stress for people in agriculture whose income will suffer. There were a couple days last spring where dry dirt took to the air in high winds. Dry conditions translated to the forests, too, and heavy smoke replaced the blowing dirt. As a farm boy, I remember times when the hot winds blew and started to tear at the soil, Dad became stressed, too. Wanting to do something to quell those clouds of dust we would start forking barnyard manure into the spreader to scatter across blowing spots. It helped only a bit but did give a feeling of putting up a fight.
When this country was first settled, real estate promoters raised a hare-brained theory about potential rainfall. “Rain follows the plow” they said and who knew to argue. It didn’t take long though for the bubble of that delusion to pop. One is left to wonder if those who preached such a thing believed it themselves or was it a scam all along.
The matter of water looms over everything. Even city-dwellers who don’t give a thought to agricultural matters will see grocery prices climb, business growth slowed, and complain they can’t float down the Ottertail River. Whenever we head south past Horace we pass a large construction project of a dam or gate for flood diversion. It appears a bit ironic now in the absence of any water to flood, but maybe someday…
The Garrison Dam reminds us about water matters. The Missouri River needed to be tamed, they said. It will be used for irrigation, they said. It will stop floods, they said. It never stopped the flood in Bismarck-Mandan in 2011. The people who flip the switches opened the gates and let her run because of the huge pressure building up behind it. We lived in Mandan at the time and marveled at the deluge of water and its destruction of property. Remember the McClusky Canal where that huge ditch was dug. The only water it has ever held was run-off from snow melt. When first viewed, the size of the hole will amaze the unsuspecting.
The dam does generate electricity to benefit thousands of people, and it does provide a nice recreational area, especially for fishing. A huge cost to society was made in building the dam. Its presence is taken for granted now, but the Three Affiliated Tribes lost 94% of their rich agricultural land and forced 1,700 residents to relocate and accept a modest payout for compensation.
A friend of the family attested to the efforts they made to relocate. They were white ranchers who resided in harmony with the Indians and found themselves displaced by the rising waters, too. When they found and purchased a new ranch some distance away, they took ten days to drive their cattle herd overland.
The reservoir backed up by the Glen Canyon Dam made recent news. Pictures showed a tall “bathtub ring” on the cliff sides indicating how low the water level has dropped leaving mineral deposits behind. But that’s not the only problem. About 100 million US tons of sediment are trapped behind the dam annually, equal to about 30,000 dump truck loads per day. Because of the dam, sediment deposited by the Colorado and its tributaries is slowly filling up the canyon.
Demands for water keep growing. I’ve read that in 1922, six U.S. states signed the Colorado River Compact to officially regulate the flow and allocate the water rights of the Colorado River and its tributaries. One small matter came up, when all the allocations were added up more than 100% of the water was promised.
Water, too much, too little, is a quandary we are forced to live with.
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