'The Water Haulers': An Infomercial?

Yesterday I posted an item about the documentary, 'The Water Haulers', produced by KNME-TV and funded by the Navajo Nation and the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer (NMOSE). The latter used a grant from the Healey Foundation for its share.

As is often the case with Western water, there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Some New Mexico friends enlightened me as to some issues surrounding the documentary and directed me to stories in the Albuquerque Journal on 21 August 2007 and 29 August 2007 (you can get a free trial pass to read these). New Mexico State Engineer John D'Antonio, featured in the documentary, was accused of a conflict of interest by Farmington environmentalist Steve Cone. D'Antonio wrote an op-ed piece last April citing the KNME documentary as evidence of the Navajos' plight, but failed to mention that his agency helped fund the program. Cone and some San Juan River irrigators have criticized the deal as providing too much water to the Navajo Nation.

KNME said that neither NMOSE nor the Navajo Nation exercised any control over the documentary's content. Cone also filed suit to obtain documents related to the production of the film, saying that KNME  "acted as a conduit for a program that was no more than an infomercial for the state and the tribe." The documents show that the state was allowed to review the script as it was being developed. I'm not a journalist, but that sounds somewhat unusual to me.

I've been away from New Mexico for a while, but my sense is that if the New Mexico "power structure" - Gov. Richardson, and Sens. Domenici and Bingaman - supports this, it's gonna happen. Just need that $800M!

One thing is certain: critics of the project do not appear in the film, nor are their concerns addressed.

Hmmm...Methinks all is not harmonious in the Land of Entrapment.

"Every calculation, based on experience elsewhere, fails in New Mexico." -- former Territorial Gov. Lew Wallace, 1878