Farming into the future

Dear Editors,

Year round, supermarkets sell baskets of flavorless red things they call berries. Where did the flavor go? Check the labels. You’ll find that the berries grow in far away, often foreign lands, in places with cheaper labor and laxer environmental control. They are picked before they are ripe, then shipped great distances. Shipping uses fossil fuel, jacks up the price and reduces the nutrient value. That the berries are flavorless should tell us something. That we’re being stiffed!

With summer in the air, we can move beyond this travesty. Across the state, farmers markets brim with fresh produce, celebrating the end of our long, cold and windy winter. These small farmers, many of them from family-owned farms, reawaken our taste buds, first through our noses, with the season’s first strawberry harvest. Don’t miss these luscious mouthfuls. They are the “real thing.”

Even though people throughout the United States are more aware about food-security, “food-miles” (added fuel cost of shipping food long distances) and locally grown produce, Colorado’s farmers markets remind us of a pressing concern: No Water - No Farms - No Food.

Water is our ongoing issue. Colorado is the only state in the Union that serves as the headwaters for l7 other states. Yet somehow there is not enough to sustain Colorado’s own food supply? This is the third consecutive summer that farmers along the South Platte suffer with no water from shut-down wells. This loss represents 30 percent of the total irrigated acreage in Colorado, a good quarter of the state. Farms are at great risk. Something needs to be done now. Will Colorado’s second-most lucrative income source (recreation being first) be eliminated?

Not just food supplies are at risk, but also water quality and other environmental concerns. The facts are these: The sum total of surface storage capacity on the South Platte River is approximately 1 million acre feet, while the aquifer holds an estimated 10.5 million acre feet on the main stem of the river. If the tributary aquifers to the South Platte River are included (Big Thompson, Cache la Poudre, Saint Vrain, Bijou, Crow Creek, and the host of other smaller creeks) the estimated aquifer storage is 28 million acre-feet. There is 28 times more water stored in the combined aquifers than all of the lakes and reservoirs along the South Platte River! In order to sustain the South Platte’s stream flow, the aquifer must be pumped and used (conjunctively) along with surface irrigation.

Water quality in the aquifer is being totally overlooked! If the aquifer is not pumped and recharged with fresh water, the leached down salts will continue to concentrate in the aquifer and destroy the irrigated farmland. Also, the numerous abandoned exploratory wells are sources for the introduction of heavy metals, including uranium and bacteria into the aquifer. These foreign substances will continue to concentrate if the aquifer is not replenished and refreshed through pumping.

Our mountain snow pack has set a new decades-high record. The run-off is under way. This water will again go to Nebraska, leaving Colorado dry. Last year 60,000 acre-feet beyond our commitment flowed to Nebraska. Does this make sense?

Our State Legislature recently vetoed a bill to turn on the wells, betraying its commitment to act for the benefit of our state and its citizens. We’re talking not just about farmers, but about you, the consumer who has the right to all of the above. How unconscionable to destroy recreation as well as agriculture.

Support your farmers market. Savor all the farm-fresh produce. Bring your neighbor and get the word out of our fresh food supply’s precarious situation. Immediately contact your legislators: including chair of the Agriculture, Livestock & Natural Resources & Energy Committee Sen. Jim Isgar, 385-7664. If you won’t help us with this simple request, who will? Remember, it’s your food!

Together, we, the people, have the power. Now is the time to exercise it and make the difference. And savor those strawberries.

– Dorothy Thomas Phelps, via e-mail

Take a pass on plastics

Dear Editors,

Single-use plastics are creating an enormous strain on our ecosystem and our planet. According to Surfrider Foundation’s website, there is an estimated 100 million tons of plastic debris that has accumulated in two areas of the Pacific Ocean. These two areas combined are larger than the continental United States. Seabirds, turtles and other marine life are often found dead with plastic in their intestines, apparently mistaking plastic for food. This study doesn’t include the strain it puts on our landfills, which is enormous.

San Francisco has banned plastic bags from supermarkets in an effort to reduce these negative environmental impacts. I encourage local businesses to follow suit. As citizens, please recycle your bags and plastic bottles for future use, or better yet, don’t use them at all. We can no longer afford to be the “throw away” society we have become. Go to www.actionnetwork.org/campaign/rap_pledge and spread the word.

– Darren Dencklau, Durango

The power of the ‘bully pulpit’

Dear Editors,

A recent letter stated that only Congress has the power to make new laws, which is partly true. The writer neglected to follow through with the whole process of drafting new legislation from a bill into an actual law. Congress with a simple majority can submit the bill to the President. If it is approved, the President can sign off on it, and it becomes law. If the President vetoes it, the bill goes back to Congress and needs a two-thirds majority in the Senate to become law.

President Bush and John McCain initially opposed the new GI Bill because they argued that it would be too expensive. Sen. Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat, however, was able to get Republican senators of good will to back him up, and they were able to override the President’s veto. Now Bush and McCain are coming on board to claim ownership of a bill they opposed because they feared it would be a disincentive for re-enlistment.

Historically, the President has the power of the “bully pulpit” that Theodore Roosevelt coined as a way to express presidential power of persuasion and to put potential laws on the agenda for Congress to consider. During Bush’s first six years, he had a Republican majority and did not make a single veto. He did, however, make an unprecedented number of signing statements, which is too complicated to go into here. Their effect was to significantly enhance executive powers, though.

– James Mooney, Vietnam Navy veteran, Durango