First off, I am a Southerner, not an Easterner, and proud of it. I spent nearly four years of my life in Albuquerque (Kirtland AFB), and I hope to retire there someday. The water supply there is important to me. In the late sixties, I remember the “City Fathers” in Albuquerque saying that the water resources available to the city was adequate for the then population of 300,000, but I’m sure that assessment was based on the snowfall that was occuring in the mountains at that time. Now, the mountain snowfall is not coming, neither is the rain; but that is temporary. The real question is this. Can the Albuquerque and central New Mexico area sustain a population of over a million plus people and growing? This is a more important question than the maintenance of a little jet fuel spill in the current water supply. The fuel spill contamination will be controlled. It will either be isolated and allowed to decay in a few years (not thousands of years); the water will be treated and the contamination will be removed if it cannot be isolated; or the necessary engineering infrastructure will be built to pipe in water from the Mississippi system. The latter two are expensive options, but I am sure they will be considered if they become necessary, but they will likely not sustain a poplation in the millions. The best way is to stand back and help nature take its course, as it is usually the best way even if it needs a little help.

Incidentally, can you imagine the horrendous environmental impact study at the EPA that such a tremendous project as piping so much Mississippi River water to the Southwest would require. The EPA would have to triple in size just to do the environmental impact. It would make the study required for the oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf look like that of a conference for the General Services Administration in Las Vegas. By the time such a study is completed, and the work is begun, the original jet fuel contamination will be long gone by natural causes.

The spill originally occurred south of the main population center of the City of Albuquerque. I imagine that water in the underground aquifer is traveling over the course of time in essentially the same direction as the surface water in the Rio Grande River, which is south and away from the population center. Although the spilled material initially spread across Gibson Boulevard and into the immediate area of southeast Albuquerque adjacent to the Base, the long term migration of the contaminents (if they migrate extensively at all) will likely be southward in the same direction as the river. The vast majority of the contaminents will never migrate, but will be absorbed permanently by the geological structure of the mountains where the spill occurred. The portion that does migrate will migrate southward away from the population center, and there will be more time for natural decontamination to occur. I doubt if the water supply of Belen and the cities down river will be affected because the course of the migration will not extend that far. This is what I mean by “all shook up” before looking at the scientific facts.

Why should I bring my own water? The West has plenty of water if it is used wisely. It may not sustain the population of New York State, but it should sustain the population of the Mountain States plus foreseeable growth in the immediate future.

The water in North Arkansas is essentially coming from the same place as the water in the central New Mexico aquifer, that is the mountains of Colorado. The headwaters of the Arkansas River are in southern Colorado as are the headwaters of the Rio Grande River. In normal times, Arkansas gets quite a lot of rain from the Gulf; but, in normal times, the Colorado mountains get lots and lots of snow (and rain) that is carried from the Pacific by the jet stream. Now the jet stream appears to be runing mostly north along the Canadian border carrying the mosture with it. It may be a natural cycle, or the massive cutting and drainage of the rainforest around the Pacific basin in order to grow food may be having an influence, or Al Gore may be right and the burning of fossil fuels may be placing a few thousandths of a per cent too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thus absorbing more of the sun’s energy, reflecting less of it back. It is likely a combination of all of the above with natural solar phenomena in regards to the sun taking precedence simply because the sun is so much bigger than the earth, and it is the energy supply of the entire solar system.

The Tenn-Tom waterway was built out of national security considerations. It was not built to supply water for a particular region to grow food and to sustain a particular population. It was built to enable commercial shipping from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, and it was built to provide a safe haven in time of war for our commercial and military fleet. For that reason, there is little comparison between the Tenn-Tom waterway and a water pipeline to the soutwest. The flow of abundant Pentagon money (at least it was abundant in the past) into a national security project does not compare with the flow of government money into a project meant only to provide abundant water for watering lawns and industry which already has plenty of water to sustain life. The first concerns the entire nation; the latter concerns only a particular region.