The Colorado River serves 40 million people in the West and has been losing water in the last two decades equivalent to the entire storage capacity of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir (formed by the Hoover Dam) in the United States.
Diminishing returns on groundwater; overuse of aquifers; more wells, less yield out of them; current wells going dry; battles for water rights — these are just a few scenarios that are affecting water sufficiency in Colorado.
Lately, the NFH has been publishing more articles on water issues in the county. We aren’t trying to scare people; we just want to educate our readers. I find it raining to understand all of it, but I want to know what is going to happen to our water supply in the future, especially as El Paso County’s continued growth seems inevitable.
This month, Terry Stokka in his column, Land & Water, talks about big water projects in Colorado, and Pete Gawda reports on water rights issues in Paint Brush Hills.
March is Women’s History Month, so I Googled (what did we do without Google) famous Colorado women, and found quite a few who took up causes for the betterment of Colorado.
In the late 1800s, Helen Hunt Jackson (a widow) wintered in Colorado Springs, where she met her second husband, William Sharpless Jackson. She then took up the cause for Native Americans and their mistreatment by the government. The issues she wrote about were controversial, but she considered her book, “A Century of Dishonor,” her most important work to help ease the plight of the American Indian. The beautiful Helen Hunt Falls in Cheyenne Canyon is named after her.
Then, there was Fannie Mae Duncan; as an African-American growing up in the Springs, which was largely segregated at the time, she crossed many racial boundaries when she opened the famous Cotton Club, just south of the Antlers Hotel. The jazz club was open to anyone — black or white — from 1948 to 1975. Her tagline was “everybody is welcome.” The club hosted some big name musicians like Duke Ellington, Etta James and Billie Holiday. Fannie Mae has been recognized in the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.
All of those women paved the way for generations of female leaders and advocates for a myriad of causes. The month of March has us coming and going. By that I mean, don’t forget to turn the clocks forward in compliance with Daylight Saving Time. Can we just stop the fall back and spring forward and have one permanent time for the country?
Anyway, Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Happy Spring and Happy Easter!
See you in April!
– Michelle
