On my Arizona ranch, I see how federal handouts put ranching land and self-sufficiency at risk

Eric Schwennesen

My family has sought to remain self-sufficient in running our ranch. But the trap of federal subsidies has reshaped our land and even our culture.

It has been a difficult year on Arizona’s rangelands. Generally, we can expect significant rainfall only twice a year, in a short winter and in summer’s monsoons. These have failed to a large degree for a few stressful years: No snowpack to feed the creeks, and no creeks in the arroyos of our Mogollon Rim country. Wells, pipelines and storage tanks are all that stand between the mule deer, coatimundis, bats, bears, horses and cattle — and desolation. Water storage is an obsession here, a way of life. My family has owned this ranch since 2005, though it dates to the 1880s when it was part of a much larger ranch. A new watering system was being installed on the ranch at the time we were purchasing it: 18 miles of pipe, five 10,000-gallon storage tanks and 10 livestock/wildlife drinkers spread across 11,000 acres of canyons, mesas, arroyos and cliffs. Without it, there could be no land management; without water, there is no life...Recently we have discovered multiple, and increasing, corrosion leaks in Saddle Tank, one of the 10,000-gallon storage tanks in the system. This has stripped away my faith in government programs. First came the immediate realization that the failure of this tank puts us in a critical predicament. We're in extreme drought, and what water we have cannot be wasted. Second, our management plan hinges on putting water through this system, because there is no other source of water. Our ranch maps when we arrived here in 2005 indicated 34 functioning springs scattered across the ranch. Thanks to the dry years, we now have one, and possibly soon, none. It was the NRCS, an agency generally known among ranchers for competent, logical support work, that designed, supervised and approved the completion of the livestock water pipeline on this ranch. I contacted the local NRCS staff with some questions when the magnitude of the crisis became clear. Were they fully aware of the materials, design and construction of this project? Yes. Did the layout of the project meet known standards and criteria? Yes. Most important, what was the designed lifespan for this extremely challenging, expensive, complex project? Ten years. Ten years...But now, it appears that the whole system has exceeded its service life, and NRCS considers it complete. In all the known history of the West, when did anyone design a vital system to expire after 10 years? Did they intend to repeat the whole project every decade? But this project can't be repeated:..MORE