Titanic Post

We finally got some rain down in the basin, a little over .5 of an inch for the year now. If this keeps up, we should have over an inch by end of December. The mountains have gotten a little, but I’m not sure how much. All the mountain communities are busy thinning out the trees and underbrush around populated areas. I hope they will continue through out the “pined” area. In all the old photos from late 19th Century you see how thinly populated are the trees. Vision would have been several hundred yards through the pines. I used to think it was because they clear-cut it all, but that was the natural state of the forest. What we have now is the ability to see less than 5 yards. This is an example of environmentalism run amok. Damn you Smoky Bear! Now the forest is still closed, even to use the dirt roads between towns requires a permit.

I just recovered from the desire to become a town person. I was getting tired of the drive into town and my mess out here. Much to my surprise, I have excellent credit, so I started looking for a house in town. In that process I remembered that there is no place in that town I want to live. The only thing I can say about Alamogordo is that it is contractor friendly. And ‘growth at all cost’ friendly. We are just about out of water and the city commission has just approved four new sub-divisions and is building a new golf course club house at taxpayer’s expense. City folks can water their lawns once a week now.

They are proud that they keep drilling new wells into the almost depleted aquifers of drinkable water and they are stalled at building reverse osmosis plants and making our generous supply of brackish water drinkable. Oh, and they are using our drinking water to grow alfalfa, nuts, and chili. The chili, of course, is a necessity. There have been several offers from non-profits to set up RO equipment and use existing undisputed wells to the west. They even had private investors lined up. The commission prefers to use public money and disputed wells to the north.

This wouldn’t bother me so much, except that I get my water out of the same aquifer and they keep drilling more wells as the snow fed mountain surface water has ceased to appear the past years. So, build on Alamogordo! And remember that growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell, and you can’t drink money!