Micro-Climate Blog: Water in the West

By Marcy Rockman, Lifting Rocks Climate and Heritage Consulting, for the SHA Climate Heritage Initiative

Water in the American West is a many-layered story. This piece from TIME contrasts and compares the water experiences of the Diné across the Navajo Reservation and communities of Washington County in southern Utah across issues of water rights, water realities, and values and perspectives that underlie them. 

Archaeological connections to this story also have many layers. For one, people have lived with variable amounts of water across the region for millennia, and archaeology holds records of how and where they managed this. In their study of drought and migration across the Southwest, archaeologists Scott Ingram and Karen Schollmeyer shake up assumptions about vulnerability and adaptive capacity; archaeology here helping us to see what we thought we knew in a different light. 

For two, this story is an explication of the diversity of values and perspectives for place and landscape that the practice of archaeology, done well, should always keep in mind. Water use in Utah seems hard to describe without reference to economic and population growth, even as conservation measures are showing effect; the Diné describe water as Life itself, as living.

For three, the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which assigned more water than is usually in the Colorado amongst its partner states, is an example of a legislative framework now being updated to better reflect the environments through which it flows. As work goes forward in effort to address other aspects of climate change, such as permitting for renewable energy, it is important for all of us to keep eyes on other legislation passed in the 20th century and ensure that the many layers and capacities of and care for archaeology and heritage are incorporated if and as these are updated.

Featured Link: https://time.com/7019660/colorado-river-water-drought-navajo-nation/

For a listing of all blog posts in this series, visit our Climate Heritage Initiative page.

Photo credit: View across the future Chief Toquer Dam, part of a series of ephemeral drainages that will form a new reservoir in southern Utah; photo by Elliott Ross (published in Time at the Featured Link) .