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Documenting Western water rituals
Spring-cleaning the acequia: A photo essay Spring-cleaning the acequia: A photo essay

It's almost summer, and that means the irrigation floodgates are open wide, bringing water to the crops of the West. But before water can flow, ditches need tending.
 
High Country News intern Sierra Crane-Murdoch and documentary photographer Sharon Stewart go behind the scenes of a centuries-old New Mexican water tradition -- the annual cleaning of the acequia, the communal irrigation ditch system. In North America, such ditches date back to the Spanish occupation of the Southwest, but the cooperative care of water systems has a longstanding history in both indigenous and European society, says Stewart.
 
Read an interview with Sharon Stewart, and learn more about the town of El Cerrito's traditional limpia, or community maintenance of its acequia, at HCN.org

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High Country News seeks new bloggers for its community blog, the Range. We seek to diversify the breadth of opinions on the Range blog to greater reflect the variety of opinion and experience in the American West.

If you care for the West's landscape and resources and can offer a provocative perspective from outside the mainstream environmentalist party line, we want you. We seek ranchers and farmers, free market advocates and policy wonks. You must be able to write regularly (once or twice monthly) on topics relevant to the news of the day, and argue your points with logic, passion, and at least a dash of humor, as warranted.

E-mail stephanieo@hcn.org


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An Oregon nonprofit allows young girls from troubled homes to become a Princess for a Day.  
 
The revolution will be motorized The revolution will be motorized
 
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The road rage over federal attempts to manage motorized access to public land is disproportionate and completely distracting.

 

For more than a decade, HCN contributing editor Matt Jenkins has plumbed the depths (and shallows) of the most important and problematic resource issue confronting the American West: water.


Watch Matt talk about the importance of water in the West

 

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