We can help with this!

 

Can you imagine being a young woman who is just getting her first period -- and there is no running water in your home or anywhere nearby? Far too many rural Nicaraguans live like that. El Porvenir helps such communities to help themselves -- digging wells, building water systems, improving watersheds. 

On May 28th, we celebrate Menstrual Hygiene Day, a day dedicated to dispelling myths and misconceptions that affect the lives of many girls in Nicaraguan communities. Our menstrual hygiene program includes conducting workshops, giving talks in schools, and setting up school hygiene corners (areas in the classroom with hygiene products like soap, toilet paper, and pads.) Our program aims to dismantle these barriers so girls can learn about menstrual hygiene and lead healthier lives.

 You can help. Please contribute today.

World Water Day

Like too much of the planet, a combination of oligarchic rapacity -- rich families cutting timber and grazing life stock, mostly -- and climate warming has destroyed half of Nicaragua's forests over the last 50 years. Rural people compound environmental damage as they scour the land for firewood to fuel wood burning cook stoves.

Without healthy forests, clean water becomes more scarce, trickling away as run off. Communities are left with less arable fields and simply less water to sustain lives.

Pastor and his family now practice agroforestry, have orchards, and set up a local seed bank. "...We see that as the future for our children so they will have good land to work on.”

El Porvenir has been helping rural Nicaraguans improve their access to clean water since 1990. Where once that work consisted in digging more and deeper wells, today much of the organization's effort has turned to helping communities preserve sustainable water sources by improving whole watersheds.

What's that mean? Mostly, it means smart planting and tending of young trees. Healthier forests help improve adjacent crop yields. Conservation preserves water sources for future generations.

You can help improve Nicaraguan watersheds and the lives of rural communities with any contribution to El Porvenir's watershed improvements campaign.

Making a big difference where even a little helps a lot

The Nicaraguan town of Comoapa is only a couple of hours drive from the capital city of Managua, but you don't have to look far to see that many of the benefits of modern life are few and far between. Last week members of the board of the water and sanitation organization El Porvenir had the chance to see a tidbit of what our diligent local staff are accomplishing alongside the local people at one site.

 

Students and staff of the Josefa Toledo school gave us a warm welcome.

 

Thanks to our help and the community's efforts, they now have brand new, sustainable, latrines -- one each for boys, girls, and staff.

 

The inspirational mural on the doors was their idea. These young people are being taught to love and preserve their beautiful countryside.

 

What visit from faraway strangers would be complete without some folkloric dances?

The mission of El Porvenir is inspiring:

We believe all people deserve clean water, safe sanitation, and the knowledge to sustain it for the generations to follow. We partner with the people of Nicaragua to build a better future for themselves through the sustainable development of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) education projects.

We also take it a step further with our watershed management program, which promotes water flow, increases food security, and reduces the impact of climate change.

Clean drinking water for all Nicaraguans—no matter how remote or how bad the road is—is at the core of everything we do, now and into the FUTURE.

Specific requests for the season of giving

As so many friends who see these posts know, I'm a longtime supporter of El Porvenir, a grassroots partnership between rural Nicaraguans and North Americans (and others) working to bring comprehensive clean water projects to the countryside.

This year, in this daunting season of fund appeals, the Nicaraguan staff (which is most all the staff) shared what they really need for Christmas.

* * *

* * *

Please help.

 

I promise you that your donations go a long way in a country where people fix, repair, and carry on despite poverty and isolation from the world economy. El Porvenir offers many ways for those of us more fortunate to assist Nicaraguans. Let's get these hard working folks what they need.

New normal

 

The next generation to come along will see the lower image as simply the way things are. H/t Adam Tooze.

The present generation has seen this here in Nevada.

Click to enlarge. This is a branch of Lake Mead.

Some reminder that water is life!

Nicaraguans also want a better future

 

For today I'll be thinking not about winning our campaign to keep Nevada blue, but about another vital project: helping Nicaraguans help themselves to improve water quality and sanitation in the kind of communities you find at the ends of the roads in the countryside. El Porvenir is having its annual board retreat. 

 

Via Zoom, as we do these things these days.

Take a look at the video. Any donation you make to El Porvenir goes right to aiding the people you see in this short film.

A tale of two terrorists

Jessica Reznicek is doing long prison time.

In 2021 she was sentenced to 8 years in prison with a domestic terrorism enhancement. ... Under normal conditions Jess would have been sentenced to 37 months, but the terrorism enhancement resulted in a sentence of 96 months.

The Des Moines Register unsympathetically describes her offense. Along with another woman, she

... repeatedly vandalized construction sites connected to the 1,172-mile [oil] pipeline in 2016 and 2017, setting a bulldozer on fire and using oxy-acetylene torches to damage pipeline valves across Iowa. The total cost of the damage is not known, but in one incident in Buena Vista County alone it was estimated at $2.5 million.

Nobody was hurt. Her protest damaged a corporation's bottom line and delayed the Dakota Access Pipeline much less than she, or many of us, would wish.

This tar sands oil pipeline could pollute the water supply of much of the Mississippi River Basin.

And more enhancements to the oil supply is the last thing any of us need in the era of climate change. 

Reznicek did not try to hide from the feds when they came after her. This was classic civil disobedience.

But to a federal judge thinks she's a "terrorist" and sentenced her accordingly.

• • •

Meanwhile Heather Cox Richardson reports that in Washington, D.C., the courts are confronted by an offender who sure seems to me a better fit for the "terrorist" label.

... the Department of Justice requested that the first defendant from the January 6 insurrection to be convicted at trial, Guy Reffitt, be sentenced to 15 years in prison. This is an upward adjustment of sentencing guidelines because the department is asking the judge to consider Reffitt’s actions as terrorism, since the offense for which he was convicted “was calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.”  

Reffitt was a leader of the Texas Three Percenters militia gang, which calls for “rebellion” against the federal government. He came to Washington, D.C., for January 6. He attacked U.S. Capitol Police officers and encouraged others to do so before entering the Capitol armed with a handgun, where he targeted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).  

A camera on his helmet recorded Reffitt’s words that day. “I’m taking the Capitol with everybody f*cking else,” Reffitt told the people around him. “We’re all going to drag them m*therf*ckers out kicking and screaming. I don’t give a sh*t. I just want to see Pelosi’s head hit every f*cking stair on the way out. (Inaudible) F*ck yeah. And Mitch McConnell too. F*ck ‘em all. They f*cked us too many g*dd*mn years for too f*cking long. It’s time to take our country back. I think everybody’s on the same d*mn wavelength. And I think we have the numbers to make it happen…. [W]e’ve got a f*cking president. We don’t need much more. We just get rid of them m*therf*ckers and start over.” 

Afterward, he boasted, “We took the Capital [sic] of the United States of America and we will do it again.”

Now that's one scary guy. Prison is no good for anyone, But there are sure a lot of us who don't want him near by.

Away with useless grass!

Scanning The Nevada Independent, this wonderful ad popped up:

Since most readers here aren't located in Nevada, I've broken the link to the landscape company that placed it. Sorry if you wanted their services -- but you can probably find it.

The ad makes me jump for joy. 

The state of Nevada makes no sense as a population center. It's a desert, for goodness sake. 

Yet the Las Vegas area has been growing for years. And the city has been drawing its water from the Colorado River by way of artificial Lake Mead for decades. Because of the long running western drought, Lake Mead is currently at its lowest level ever. 

Now Las Vegas is actually somewhat better at water conservation than you might think. All those attractive fountains around casinos use recycled water quite efficiently. 

But in 2021 the Nevada legislature took what residents of many U.S. locales might consider a drastic step to reduce water waste. They moved to outlaw "useless grass" in many settings. 

LAS VEGAS—Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak has signed into law a bill supported by the Southern Nevada Water Authority that requires the removal of “useless,” or purely decorative, grass throughout the Las Vegas Valley by the end of 2026. ...

The law does not apply to grass in homeowners’ yards, or to grass used for recreation at schools and parks.

... Nonfunctional turf is grass that no one uses for sports, picnics, or other recreational activities. Some areas of nonfunctional turf are simply narrow strips grass bordering parking lots, walkways, and sidewalks. These narrow areas of purely decorative grass create significant amounts of sprinkler overspray and water waste.

Other examples of nonfunctional turf are found along streets between the curb and sidewalk; in traffic circles and medians; in landscaping at office parks and commercial properties, and at entryways for housing developments.

If the only person that uses the grass is pushing a lawn mower, it is nonfunctional.

So, happily, enterprising businesses are seeking to profit off helping landowners come into compliance.

And Nevada is setting a pattern that most regions will have to adopt as the earth warms. Unused expanses of green grass will become a luxury. Let's do it voluntarily before we're forced by necessity. We can learn to appreciate alternatives.

It's official

The Chron reports: 

The water year has officially come to an end — and once again, the Bay Area has come up dry. ... A normal water year in San Francisco produces 23.65 inches of rain, but the city only saw 9.04 inches this past season. ...

Looking back over recent water years, the data shows below-normal percentages for all three Bay Area cities for half or more of the past six years — with the most recent the worst. 

Drought makes for beautiful dry days, a great opportunity to enjoy this city where getting outside is so easy. It's hard not to simply delight in them. 

But we have to learn to save water ...

The Chron adds further:

California vineyards can still make great wine even with limited water supply and droughts

What El Porvenir works to end ...

Picking up the daily water supply is a long and arduous job for rural women in Nicaragua. Their lives don't have to be that hard. Go along on this woman's daily task in this video -- and then visit El Porvenir to help out!

Domestic terrorism

Yesterday morning, in an article about the Biden administration Justice Department's clean up of the agency post-Trump, Donald Ayer, Norman Eisen and E. Danya Perry, establishment legal eagles all, included a throwaway line that caught my eye:

Attorney General Garland has taken forceful action in a number of areas posing the greatest threats to our system of government and law. ... developing and moving forward with a comprehensive program to address and combat domestic terrorism ...

The Trump era showed that professional legal ethics can act as some barrier against the worst corruptions and perversions of the legal system. Even at its most minimal level, attorney caution about breaking the rules slowed our tinpot dictator down a bit. And some lawyers quit rather than be a party to legal travesties like withdrawing charges against a guilty-by-his-own-admission Michael Flynn.

And I certainly want to see the DOJ find legal ways to disrupt and prosecute the bumper crop of white nationalists and neo-Nazis that have become foot soldiers for Trump's Republican Party. Like all of us, they must have a right to their opinions, but these gun nuts and thugs demonstrated how immediately dangerous to other people they are on January 6. Their violence that day was in service of a greater crime, preventing certifying of a lawful election. The law has to find a way to hold them accountable.

But ...

Another bit of news that crossed my screen reminded me that asking judges to judge whether someone is a domestic terrorist is a perilous delegation of power.

A federal judge in Des Moines, Iowa, has recently sentenced Jessica Reznicek to eight years in prison. Reznicek is an unusually brave and determined opponent of the Dakota Access Pipeline which carries crude oil under Iowa and the Mississippi River; detractors insist line's owners, Energy Transfer LLC, are endangering the water supply for the whole region. Along with Ruby Montoya, Reznicek carried out a campaign of sabotage against the pipeline, destroying construction equipment and pipe line facilities. The women didn't stop the project -- but the damage they caused cost the company more than $6 million.

These are non-violent resistors of the Catholic Worker-inspired sort, spiritually-motivated pacifists. They acted in the belief that they were impeding evil. No human being was injured in their campaign. When ready, they announced their guilt and stood by to be arrested. They proclaimed their purposes: they aim for more human flourishing, not less.  (And there weren't any accidents marring the non-violent character of their actions.) There's a long, sweet account of their moral and intellectual evolution in this article from Rolling Stone.

But to a federal judge, Reznicek is a terrorist, which meant she deserved a longer sentence.

Jessica’s attorney Bill Quigley [stated], “Unfortunately, actions to protect our human right to water were found to be less important than the profit and property of corporations which are destroying our lands and waters. For a country which was founded by the rebellion of the Boston Tea Party this is extremely disappointing. But the community of resistance will no doubt carry on. And history will judge if Jessica Reznicek is a criminal or a prophet. Many of us are betting she’s a prophet.”

I get that people who are convinced that their moral rectitude gives them a duty to disrupt the good order of our complaisance are dangerous. But perhaps they are also essential to the rest of us, to remind us to check our own values.

They are not, to my mind, properly labelled "terrorists." 

Fire, not flood ahead

It just didn't rain last year. I'm not sure the weather scientists can predict when it will rain. All we can do is not waste water.

Tech industrial hope and fantasy for Nevada

Working the election in Reno, NV in 2018 to snag another Democratic U.S. Senate Seat (that would be Jackie Rosen) and a Democratic governor (that's Steve Sisolak), I necessarily became interested in how the city and Washoe County functioned. The place was obviously changing fast. Once "the Biggest Little City in the World," a pitstop on Interstate 80 for California gamblers and outdoor adventurers, it was growing like mad. When we talked to voters, they complained about crowded schools, rising home prices, downtown construction, and increased numbers of unhoused people.

At the time, I realized I was seeing a new sort of economy, which I thought of as "tech industrial." Its crowning manifestation was Tesla's Gigafactory, touted as expected to add over 20,000 jobs, directly and indirectly. In the nondescript warehouses south of the town and the glitzy casinos, there were mysterious blockchain prospectors and server factories. Something was happening here. 

These days that Democratic Governor we helped elect has become a proponent of "Innovation Zone" legislation which would allow Blockchains LLC to build a new, 36,000 person city in nearby Storey County, current population a mere 4000 desert rats. The county doesn't want to be developed, at least this way. The state sees potential jobs and perhaps eventually revenue; the tech entrepreneurs would get the freedom to experiment, according to CEO Jeff Berns.  

“Now we’re saying to the state: ‘Look, the county doesn’t really want us to do this,'” Berns said. “This is the impact on our whole state of what we’re attempting to do. Yes, there are hundreds of things that can go wrong. But if it goes right, think of what it could mean for the state.” 

With Sisolak’s endorsement, Blockchains is asking lawmakers to establish new laws that would allow wealthy developers with an innovative technology and large land holdings to break away from existing counties and create a new local government, known as an “Innovation Zone.” 

Blockchains, which controls about 67,000 acres of land outside of Reno and recently purchased water rights, wants to build a technology park and new city along the Truckee River that would incubate blockchain technology, which offers a decentralized form of information storage that experts say is more secure and could give individuals more authority over their data.

The new city would set up its own local government, apparently run on the company's blockchain-based currency, and generally promises to be something new -- and profitable -- under the sun. 

Not surprisingly, there are critics. Environmentalists worry about where the new city would get its water. This is, after all, a desert. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe is concerned that the Blockchain project would hinder their restoration efforts which seek to repair the lake. (EARTH FOCUS: The New West and the Politics of the Environment is a wonderful Nevada film that tells that story.)  

And, there's the fact that Berns has been a major political supporter to Governor Sisolak, helping to fund his campaign.

Berns said he approached state officials because the company’s plans, if successful, could have a significant fiscal impact on the state. With plans to launch a digital currency tied to the dollar, Blockchains said it would charge a micro-fee on transactions that could generate revenue.

... “My vision for this is a place where people can come to create,” he said. “In innovating new ideas, you have failing. That’s just the nature of innovation. We have failed probably 50 times already on what we’re trying to develop. So I want to create a place where that’s OK.” The goal with the Innovation Zone is to create a place to develop new blockchain technology.

Whether Berns and his buddy Sisolak have a chance to subject Nevada to this vision remains to be seen. The state legislature has to sign on and Nevada has many competing interests. But in a state whose paradigmatic urban center is Las Vegas (with 85 percent of the population), betting on hope and fantasy comes naturally. Maybe the tech industrial vision being peddled outside Reno will make a go of it. 

Steven Colbert thinks not -- he thinks this scheme is a classic "Uh Oh!" It's worth watching through the intro to get Colbert's take on the story.

It's the new oil!

 
As the planet warms and we humans proliferate:

Wall Street Vultures Are Ready to Get Rich From Water Scarcity

Bloomberg reported on Sunday that California water futures are now officially on the Wall Street markets, with the United States–based CME Group heading up the 2021 contracts connected to the state’s billion-dollar water market. The “commodity” was most recently going for $496 per acre-foot with the main purchasers of the futures—which were first announced by CME in September—expected to be large-scale water consumers, chiefly utility companies and the states’ Big Ag corporations. (California is home to the largest agriculture market in the nation.) “Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come,” RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray told Bloomberg. “We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops.” We’ve officially reached a new phase of the Mad Maxification of America. ....

Collective survival on a warming planet will require that at some point we come to understand that water is a shared good, the inheritance from interstellar space of every living thing. Our lives make this hard to recognize.

Water is the strangest thing on earth ... and throughout the universe

Really. Watch this from the BBC.

Science journalist Alok Jha marvels:

"all of the water on earth is alien ... the water arrived from asteroids and comets from the edges of space..."

"did you know that hot water freezes faster than cold? ..."

"we now know there's water on the moon, on Mars, on Pluto .."

Humans cannot live without water. Sixty percent of our bodies are water. 

Our science can observe water, but as Mr. Jha explains, does not understand water.

Indigenous peoples know that water is life.

That's why I'm proud to serve as a member of the board of El Porvenir which assists rural Nicaraguans bringing clean water to their isolated rural communities.

Good news you understandably might have missed

While we were all trying to adjust to being locked down, some good stuff happened out there.

Did you know that Colorado abolished the death penalty last Monday? Governor Jared Polis signed the measure sent him from the Democratic legislature eliminating capital punishment and also converted the sentences of three men awaiting execution to life without the possibility of parole. This makes Colorado the 22nd state without a death penalty. Many states, including California, retain death penalty laws on the books, but seldom or never execute convicted offenders....Early in March, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger ordered removal of Confederate paraphernalia from all of the service's bases. Oh, you thought that the victor in that war had been determined a century and a half ago? So did I. But after members of Congress had held a hearing on white supremacist activity in the ranks, the general felt he should take action.

"We're not being politically correct -- nobody told me to do this. The sergeant major and I are just trying to do what's right for the institution.

"We're trying to make it better."

...

Finally, the Water Is Life movement scored a big win against a dangerous, dirty oil pipeline.

... a federal court issued a major ruling in favor of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s legal challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline. The D.C. Court of Appeals found that the Army Corps of Engineers violated federal law in giving the pipeline a permit to cross beneath the Missouri River, at a spot just north of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, whose residents say the pipeline poses an ongoing threat to their drinking water, sacred sites, and way of life.

“This decision vindicates everything we have been saying,” Dallas Goldooth, a grassroots organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, tells Mother Jones. “Indigenous expert knowledge cannot be ignored. The fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground cannot be ignored. This is a huge win, not just for the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes, but for the hundreds of other nations fighting extractive projects on their lands.”

Will this hold up in court? There's a chance. The victory is a reminder of what Native Americans have to know: never say never.

Nicaraguan communities building a sustainable future

So a well-run North American non-profit organization can assist Nicaraguans by funding improvements in water access and sanitation in remote communities. But what makes those gains stick? The key to sustainability is community ownership and management of the new resources.

This weekend we, El Porvenir board members, visited a new pumping station we had helped a community build.

The murals the community chose to decorate the facility tell a story of hope in the future:

Trees preserve water and the land.

And you don't cut them down.

Apollinaire Sosa is the operator of the facility; the job of ensuring that water flows is his.

He's the fellow who gets to turn the blue wrench.

Elizabeth Torres acts as the community treasurer: she makes sure that the 145 families (over 500 people) served by the metered system pay their monthly assessments. The community is proud that their water system has established that everybody pays and they have built up a reserve fund of over $1000 for any mechanical emergencies.

This is what the future can look like.

Saturday scenes: Nicaragua site visits

El Porvenir partners with the people of rural Nicaragua to bring clean water, safe sanitation, and tools to sustain their land for future generations. Where better to assist this work than in schools? Yesterday we, board members, were driven around to three schools in the Terrabona region.

At Las Joyas:

Students hung on the fence, curious about their North American visitors.

The organization has provided an elegant handwashing station. The neighborhood has decorated it ...

... and teachers amplify the message that clean hands reduce sickness.

The students performed their festive dance with their visitors.

At a nearby pre-school:

More dancing and some enthusiastic drummers ...

... and three squeaky clean latrines, lovingly painted by parents.

The children had made the girls' stall their own; their teacher displayed their toilet paper holder made from a recycled plastic bleach bottle.

At another school we were feted with skits created for Indigenous People's Day:

Besides getting to dress up, kids acted out the story of how invading Spaniards set native people against each other -- the boys got to "bang-bang" very happily.

Students displayed their native foods and plants ...

... while proud mothers watched.

Next post will be about the community-wide pumping and water delivery system which El Porvenir has enabled the community to build and manage.

Does it really require closing a mountain peak to monitor storms and rainfall?

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission thinks so. I run on this rocky outcropping -- Montara Mountain which sits between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay -- as often as once a week. It's rugged and often nearly empty of recreational users. But city bureaucrats have decided they have to close the top -- because, well, I guess the decaying communication towers weren't enough unsightly litter. Seriously now, must they close off yet more wild land that is only lighted used?

This is an agency with an imperial attitude about the watersheds it "protects." For decades, it has made the ridgeline fire road west of Crystal Springs Reservoir off limits. Meanwhile San Mateo County has no qualms about its heavily used Sawyer Camp Trail on the east side where a determined polluter could probably toss a stone into the water. But hey, SFPUC closes its side to all but its own employees, some of whom get to live in this lovely wild area. (I went on a legal, supervised hike there once during which the water guys tracked us in a pickup.)

Please sign this petition asking the SFPUC to find other options than closing off the North Peak of the mountain.

When the well runs dry: cooperation yields better result than competition

This map offered today by the Washington Post provides a scary picture of the many areas of the United States where climate chaos and human density are putting strain on water resources, especially in southwestern states. Are we going to end up like Cape Town, South Africa, where increasing shortages almost led to a complete municipal water shut off in a modern city? The story is worth reading.

But there's another story worth contemplating:

The climate-inspired detente on the Colorado
For the first time in history, low water levels on the Colorado River have forced Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico to cut back the amount of water they use. ... “It is a new era of limits,” said Kevin Moran, who directs the Environmental Defense Fund’s Colorado River efforts.

... But these water-use reductions are also an example of people binding themselves to rules to deal with scarce resources, rather than going to court, or war. The cutbacks come from an agreement hammered out by the Southwestern states and Mexico to impose limits on themselves.

“It’s not necessarily well known or talked about, but this collaboration between the states and Mexico is one of the most successful cross-border water management stories in the world,” Moran said.

Over the long course of history, the various parties have fought each other over water, but found that cooperation simply works better, Moran said. ...

Read all about it.