WHAT'S YOUR PREFERENCE

WHISKEY OR WATER?   Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, is accredited with saying  "Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over".  I am sure he was somewhere in the West when he said that.  I am also sure that all those people back east running around like ants from a den have no clue how precious water  in the West actually is. Well, maybe not all of them.  There may be a few who live there that immigrated there from the Western climes.  And if they did, they probably did so because of the above mentioned water.  Here in the Land of Enchantment, there are two water wars going on in the courts.  There is a town, or village called Magdalena that has lost it's water.  Why, cause it's so dang dry the town well went dry. And caved in. They have been receiving help from the State and neighbors hauling in water to the people there for 3 or 4 weeks now.  The State is finally about to decide to let them drill a new well.  A few miles south of this village, in a flat stretch of land called the St. Augustine Plains, an Eastern company, with foreign money backing them, wants to drill about 300 wells ( I may be wrong on the number ) to a deep aquifer and pump thousands of gallons of water every day until the aquifer runs dry.  Yep, you read that correctly and of course this case is in the courts and so far the judge has ruled against the water well drilling company.  So far the local residents are winning, but most of them are just working people and don't have the funds to fight a court battle against a large company.  We can only pray that the courts continue to see the stupidity of allowing foreign ( as in east of the Mississippi river ) entities drilling for and extracting what little water we have.  The other case is similar to this one, but is a little farther North, in the area around Albuquerque. I haven't heard a lot of details on this one yet, but from what I have heard, the case is similar to the one mentioned above.
On a related note, in Colorado there is a large brewery, brewing a popular beer. Considering the wild fires there and the water needed to fight it, and the drought that is in that State, as well as here to the south, I have to wonder how much water goes into a beverage that causes nothing but heartache, not to mention head aches. Consider all the brewerys across the country that make not only beer, but Whiskey, if they all shut down and people just drank water, then perhaps Mark Twains saying would need to be changed.  And just perhaps, even, there would be a little more water for the benefit of all, not just those who choose to drink whiskey and fight over water.  I can assure you, the water fights are real and will continue as long as the west exists.  And THAT'S THE VIEW FROM THE DITCH BANK