Chilean water rights scheme leaves rural places drying up

Don't miss Alexei Barrionuevo's story in today's New York Times. He writes about the shriveling up and near death of Quillagua, Chile', near the country's northern border. Quillagua has for decades been considered the driest place on earth, but it's gotten even drier in recent years. Without water, farming is no longer a viable livelihood. As a consequence, towns like Quillagua are being lost. Quillagua's population has dropped from about 800 in the 1940s to just 120 today. The culprit is partly law, partly mining and other industrial interests. Here's an excerpt from the story:

Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than here in Chile, experts say, where water rights are private property, not a public resource, and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment.

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Some economists have hailed Chile’s water rights trading system, which was established in 1981 during the military dictatorship, as a model of free-market efficiency that allocates water to its highest economic use.

But other academics and environmentalists argue that Chile’s system is unsustainable because it promotes speculation, endangers the environment and allows smaller interests to be muscled out by powerful forces, like Chile’s mining industry.

Urban and agricultural interests are similarly pitted against each other in the American West, but laws in this country provide more protection for the public interest, which typically means more water for agriculture and other rural uses. Still, as burgeoning populations in the West increase urban demands for water, holding enough back for agricultural uses and other needs of rural communities is only going to become more dificult.

The rural (or is it ag?)-urban disconnect in California

Don't miss Malia Wollan's story in today's NYT. The dateline is Visalia, population 91,565, and the headline is "Farmers Lead a Bid to Create Two Californias." Here is an excerpt, which refers to Virgil Rogers, a retired Visalia farmer.

So it is that in recent weeks Mr. Rogers, whose previous political involvement amounted to little more than writing a check to a favored candidate — has suddenly become a leader in a secessionist movement bent on cleaving California in two.

But while the plan is not new — the idea of two Californias has been floated dozens of times — the motivations and geographical scissor-work are. Frustrated by what they call uninformed urban voters dictating faulty farm policy, Mr. Rogers and the other members of the movement have proposed splitting off 13 counties on the state’s coast, leaving the remaining 45, mostly inland, counties as the “real” California.

Here is a quote from Mr. Rogers who arrived in California during the Dust Bowl era:

They think fish are more important than people, that pigs are treated mean and chickens should run loose ... City people just don’t know what it takes to get food on their table.

Read more about Citizens for Saving California Farming Industries, which is behind the secessionist movement. Aspects of this movement reflect the tension between more traditional production agriculture and the "foodie" movement endorsed by the likes of Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Nicholas Kristof here. Note that, consistent with Kristof's suggestion, the Senate Agriculture Committee in California has recently become the Food and Agriculture Committee.

Rural as "other" in the context of New York

This is evinced in again in coverage of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Here is a quote from Nicholas Confessore's story in today's NYT.

Ms. Gillibrand, who was twice elected to Congress from a mostly white and rural district stretching from Hudson to the Adirondacks, still faces significant obstacles as she seeks to be elected in her own right.

She is not well known downstate, where Democratic primaries are lost and won. In a recent Marist College poll, only 18 percent of Democrats rated Ms. Gillibrand as doing an excellent or good job, while more than half were unsure.

I continue to find interesting the paper's focus on Gillibrand's rurality (see earlier posts here and here), when in fact many of her biographical details reflect very urban experiences, e. g., law degree from UCLA and work for large law firms in NYC. At least this story uses the rural modifer for her former district rather than in direct reference to her. Still, the rural-urban contrast In NY is clear, with "rural" definitely the outlier.

Hardship in rural Alaska

Listen to this report from NPR. Here's the lede:

Imagine a world in which a gallon of milk can set you back $12 and a small package of spaghetti costs $6.50.

Those prices are a daily reality for Americans living in the isolated communities of rural Alaska. Things became worse recently when the high food prices were combined with high fuel costs.

Now, some families are having to choose between buying food and heating their homes.

Law and Order in the Ozarks (XVIII): Still recovering from the storm

There's not much crime news to report in the Feb. 12 and Feb. 19 issues of the Newton County Times. Not surprisingly, the county is still cleaning up after the devastating late-January ice storm, and this is garnering a lot of attention. The Feb. 12 paper promotes a state-wide call center for those affected by the recent storm. It was established by the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management (ADEM). The Feb. 19 issue features an article with the headline, "ADEM explains reimbursement." The story notes that FEMA will cover 75% of the storm-related expenses to counties and cities for items such as man hours and equipment, so long as strict policies for debris removal are followed.

Other than that, both issues reflect a preoccupation with the elk who were transplanted from Colorado to Newton County several decades ago. They have apparently become a nuisance to some. The Feb. 12 issue features the front-page headlines "AGFC begins overhaul of elk management plan" and "Boxley Valley residents voice concerns about elk neighbors." The Feb. 19 issue features a back page story about what neighboring Searcy County is doing to manage its elk population.

On the law enforcement front, the only two items on the papers' front pages are one about harm to dogs and one about possible "scam artists" posing as ADEM officials. The first reports that a dog in Jasper was injured by someone shooting blow darts, while another recently died apparently from ingestion of poison. Both incidents are being investigated, and those with tips about the matters are encouraged to report them. The second story indicates that people may be posing as FEMA or ADEM officials, and it informs the public that FEMA never charges for its services. The Feb. 19 sheriff's report is relegated to the back page. It lists a number of controlled burns, the burn ban having been lifted the prior week. It also reports a "domestic disturbance in the Parthenon area."

Interdependence of rural schools and rural communities

See this Sacramento Bee story by Walter Yost from March 3, 2009. It tells of the schools around the Georgetown Divide area of El Dorado County, California, where the Black Oak Mine Unified School District is the largest employer in a 400-square mile, sparsely populated area. Tough economic times in California mean that some school employees are likely to get pink slips in the coming weeks, and a halt of school construction projects means less local revenue from out-of-town construction workers.

The story quotes Kai Schafft, director of the Center on Rural Education and Communities at Pennsylvania State University, on the interdpendence of schools and the community: "Rural schools and communities can face a real vicious cycle in which the decline of one leads to the decline of the other."

More than broadband at stake for rural America in the stimulus package?

According to a story in today's New York Times, rural America may also get a bridge or two painted. Here's a quote from Michael Cooper's story, "Stimulus Spurs Road Projects Big and Small":

Beyond all the money for Medicaid and unemployment benefits in the huge bill passed last month, this will be the face of the country’s stimulus program: a bridge will be painted on a rural road, a new lane added on a suburban highway, a guardrail built on a median strip.

He goes on to report that, in Washington state, for example, state legislators are supporting a range of smaller projects spread across the state, while Governor Gregoire and Seattle's mayor are supporting a major project in that city. Cooper queries:

Should the bulk of the money go to metropolitan regions where the bulk of the population and economic activity are or should it be spread out evenly to suburban and rural areas across the state?

Cooper's story features links to the spending plans of a number of states.

Rural America and the recession

The New York Times today features a story headlined, "Job Losses Show Breadth of Recession," by David Leonhardt. The story does not mention rurality, but it is accompanied by a county-level map showing unemployment rates. Striking are the consistently low rates of unemployment through the sparsely populated plains states, from North Dakota down through Oklahoma, particularly the western parts of these states and the eastern parts of neighboring states like Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.

Here is Leonhardt's observation, with a caveat regarding these places' relative economic well-being.

Every state in the country, with the exception of a band stretching from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace. And even that band has recently begun to suffer, because of the sharp fall in both oil and crop prices.

Also striking is the very high unemployment in places like northwestern Arizona, which is mostly Apache and Navajo land, as well as in Grand County, Utah, which is home to gentrified Moab. Some counties in the southern part of South Dakota are also very hard hit.

The Daily Yonder, however, has written of the toll that the recession is taking in rural America, and that can be seen on the NYT map in other regions' rural areas--as in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and the Carolinas.

Maine doctors do teeth, too

A story by Katie Zezima in today's New York Times tells of a new program in Maine for training medical residents to provide dental services. This is necessary because of the shortage of dentists in the state, which has one dentist for every 2,300 residents, while the national average is 1 for every 1,600 residents. The shortage is especially acute in rural areas, where many young dentists do not wish to live and work. Here's an excerpt from the story.

In Maine, training physicians in dentistry provides a dental safety net for the rural poor who have never had one, doctors and dentists said. About two-thirds of the residents who have trained at the dental clinic now practice in the state, many in rural areas.

The story notes that similar programs have been (or are being) instituted in New Mexico, Washington, Illinois, Iowa, and North Carolina--all states with significant rural populations.

More on urban farming--of a sort

See this New York Times story about a the Queens County Farm Museum, which is now producing goods for local farmers markets.

And don't miss this on an innovative use of cow poop in Connecticut.

A (faux) rural idyll in Georgia

Read here about Serenbe, in Palmetto, Georgia, population 3,400, in the travel section of today's New York Times. The accompanying slide show is here.

It's a very carefully planned community that targets wealthy visitors, but a caption on a slide show photo of goats lists them as among the animals that "dot the rural landscape."