A Yellow River Runs Though It

—through our local foodshed that is.

The yellow plume winding its way through the beautiful Animas River Valley and Durango last August is a well publicized visual — one that many wish would just go away. Not so fast. This was a real disaster and one that we must learn from — a teachable moment on many counts.

 I hesitated to write about it at the time – so much talk, so many accusations, so much political posturing, so many unknowns at the time. The public conversation was curious but ultimately predictable: sadness, followed by madness, then gladness. The sadness in our community was the most striking to me; how could this happen here in this area known for its grand beauty and beckoning environment? The sadness remains. Madness quickly emerged as fingers were pointed — now mostly in the very capable hands of lawyers and politicians. As soon as the color subsided, there was a rush to declare it all over — back to pre-spill conditions for the river, river sports, and the Durango tourist economy. Gladness was officially proclaimed.

My self-imposed throttle on feeling glad was as unscientific, self-centered, and arbitrary as some of the commentary I heard this Summer and Fall. My favorite residents of the Animas River are the ouzels or American Dippers as they swim into the shallows even in winter after the tiny invertebrates that were of such concern during the August spill. I worried that these plump little birds might have given up on our river, and my highly scientific method was to keep looking for them whenever I happened to be in town, if the lighting was right, and if traffic on River Road allowed me to pull off safely. When I finally saw them this Fall, I was glad, and finally ready to more openly ponder what had happened and what it all meant.

There are plenty of more immediate causes of this spill, but the underlying causes seem clear, and not surprisingly, similar to the underlying causes of dysfunction in our industrial food system. Our hands-off attitude toward mining corporations mirrors that toward the agribusinesses that control our food system from seed to plate. Our ability to not see the often ugly impacts of mining (the yellow sludge is gone after all) stems from the same character flaw that allows us to ignore the all too common ugly treatment of farm animals, farm workers, the land, and the environment. We are just as unwilling to pay upfront the true costs of minerals and fossil fuels as we are to pay the true cost of food.

With my lens of local food, I was concerned about the irrigating farmers and ranchers, the immediate impact of shutting down ditches, losing an entire cutting of hay in some cases, Navajo and other farmers downstream, and lingering worries about sediments waiting to be stirred up. What became clear was that this was an eye-opening illustration of how the health of our local foodshed — that area we should look first for our food and that area we should feel most responsible for — is so connected to the health of the surrounding landscape.

What to do? Our efforts to clean up our rivers or rebuild healthy local foodsheds will not get very far if we don’t also address those underlying issues: corporate control including campaign finance reform, willingness to see the impacts of our consumerism, and willingness to pay true costs. We must work on the immediate and the underlying issues.

We also would be wise to pay closer attention to the indicators of health of our whole beautiful foodshed — for us that would include the mine discharges upstream, changing snowpack due to more warm winter storms, the plight of heat-intolerant pikas in the high alpine. Bees, bats, beavers, and birds. Essential carnivores. Soil, air, and water quality. And of course, our ouzels.