Page 14 - the Noise December 2016

v ACEQUIA story continued
all threats to the traditional acequia system and don’t seem to roll off the tongue quite as mellifluously as parciante, no?
In his book, Mayordomo, Crawford writes of the ties that acequia agriculture bind within the community of parciantes. Familial or blood obligations necessarily come first, but the arterial bonds of water delivery that connect those of Anglo and Hispanic heritage (and whomever else) are a close second. To paraphrase Crawford, the water takes no note of the heritage implied by your last name, and there is a beautiful, if impersonal, equality in that notion. And because the acequia water is of limited benefit without it being distributed amongst the parched acres surrounding it, one could argue that the land, like the water, is something of a shared resource held in common. In a nod toward this idea, the aging Crawford has leased out his parcels to a younger local farmer ready to try his hand at agricultural alchemy, turning water and soil into food for his community.
It’s worth noting that none of this discussion has anything to do with the impending federal morass that we’ve recently maneuvered ourselves into, and which occupies a vast amount of mental and media real estate. However, the acequia system and its ongoing relevance offer a important kind of alternative to not only that particular disaster, but also to the existing, hardly sensible water and land use policies closer to home here in Arizona; policies somehow reconciling massively wasteful and environmentally detrimental government-funded diversionary projects with the privatization of land and water. The acequia commons on the other hand, are a real-world, human-scale monument to historically and environmentally informed local control of essential resources. This local control does not negate powerful state, regional, and federal variables, for sure, but it remains a visible example of a small, diverse population getting along well enough, albeit imperfectly, in order to manage water, and by extension, a way of life in this beautiful but brittle, resource- limited environment that we’ve chosen to call home.
NOTICE OF
PUBLIC INFORMATION WORKSHOP
regarding the Airport Master Plan for
Tuesday, December 13, 2016 5:30-7:00 P.M.
City Hall
211 W. Aspen Street Flagstaff, AZ
EVERYONE WELCOME
OPEN HOUSE FORMAT....DROP IN ANYTIME For more information, please contact Flagstaff Airport Administration
928-556-1234
http://flagstaff.airportstudy.com
REN TAO ROASTING coming soon