Albuquerque's Environmental Story
Albuquerque's Environmental StoryEver since A.D. 900, when Pueblo Indians who moved to the Albuquerque area built diversion ditches and canals to irrigate their crops, people have been changing the natural environment to meet their needs for food, shelter, and transportation. Although some of these changes had little impact on the land, others worked at cross-purposes, solving one problem but simultaneously creating other disturbances--perhaps more and longer lasting.
Now, eleven hundred years later, no part of Albuquerque resembles what the Indians found when they came down from the Mogollan Mountains and the Four Corner area to seek a living in the Rio Grande's fertile valley.
The most dramatic alterations of the natural environment have resulted from man's attempts to extract a living from the soil, from his efforts at managing the supply of water, and from his 20th century approach to land use.
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AN ABIOTIC/BIOTIC/CULTURAL PROFILE:
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During the 19th century, major changes along the Rio Grande were motivated by an expanding need for irrigation as Albuquerque, then largely agrarian, grew in population and area. As people built along the floodplains, they drained wetlands, instituted flood controls, and constructed levees. To assure a steady and adequate supply of water and flood protection, the river was channelized and straightened.
The more people tampered with the river, the more they had to. The need to protect life and property and to provide consistent drainage led to increasing efforts to control the river. Resultant sedimentation has compounded flood control problems. The river's natural ecology was neglected as agricultural needs superseded the needs of the natural environment.
In recent years, urbanization of the city has minimized the agricultural uses of the floodplains. People are showing more interest in the natural and recreational uses of the river. Efforts to continue channelization and to eradicate bosque trees were challenged successfully by citizens who supported the idea that the river could be used in many ways; that it could serve both household and industrial needs, provide water for farming, and still be available to maintain natural habitats and offer low impact recreational outdoor opportunities.
Another major impact of agriculture on the natural environment was seen on the mesas where the Spanish settlers and their descendants grazed their livestock. Overgrazing led to rapid depletion of the vegetation, leading to soil erosion, gully formation, flooding and diminished water recharge. These problems were further compounded by the coming of the railroad in the late 19th century, as Albuquerque became a market center for livestock. Large herds of cattle and sheep were grazed on the mesas while awaiting shipment to meat processing plants.
The rapid growth of the city after World War II, spurred on by the mobility provided by the automobile, brought new kinds of problems to the natural environment. The cementing of the city for residences, roads, and parking lots caused runoff of large amounts of water which formerly would have been absorbed to recharge the water table. Flooding became an increasingly important management problem. And, as natural habitats were displaced by urbanization, wildlife was driven away or exterminated.
In the last few decades of the 20th century, urban sprawl became one of the most troublesome problems the city created for itself. Cheap land at the fringes of the city encouraged leap-frog development, which pushed the boundaries further and further out. The results are low-density suburbs, higher costs for infrastructure, greater impact on water supply, more vehicle miles traveled, more traffic and congestion, more air pollution, and increased difficulty in establishing an effective mass transportation system, which could alleviate some of these problems.
Each of us has both the opportunity and the responsibility
to transmit this city not less but better and more beautiful than it was transmitted
to us.
- Adapted from the Oath taken by Greek Officials when they took office, as quoted
by Thucydides and ascribed to Pericles.
(Up to Section IV, Back to A Mountain School, On to Schools and Their Impact on the Environment)