Many of the orginal settlers of this area made their livings as dry-land farmers, growing barley and wheat. There was not water close enough to the surface to dig or drill to get irrigation or even household water in some places, so the farmers trucked water from Valier and drained it into cisterns buried near the house. No one wasted water.
When I moved into this house, built in the Thirties, one of its shortcomings was the lack of closets. It wasn’t about lack of water -- it was about lack of money for the amount of clothes that we all wear today. In the Thirties and earlier, one had a Sunday best, a Sunday second best (last year’s best), and everyday clothes -- maybe three sets of overalls and shirts or dresses with aprons. Even when I was a child in the Forties, the rule at our house was to wear everything at least three times before it was washed. As soon as one got home from school, one hung up one’s clothes straight and hanging free so they could be worn again. Towels were supposed to be dried on the rack and used again for a week. A woman who cleans houses in Valier now tells me that none of “her” families hang up towels or even put them in hampers -- they are simply left on the floor after each use until someone has time to run them through the wash. They are big fat towels -- doesn’t take many of them to make a load.
Valier was built on the premise of irrigation: that irrigation ditches would make this high prairie into a lush green Eden to rival Iowa. No one thought about the short cool growing season. The water did make some difference and the fact that the ditches were mostly dug by hand by reservation Indians working for a low wage helped their economy a little. Now the irrigation impoundment lake (“Lake Francis”) has become a great talking point for “development” for boats, fish, jetskis and the like. On the promise that the campground will be a big money maker, water and electricity have been installed. Also, a great many trees have been planted around town, all of which must be watered to survive.
A schism is developing over water. The town wells are low and not refilling. Global warming is permanently melting the mountain snowpack that feeds the underground aquifer. We’ve just been through five years or more of drought, but this year started off wet, so the newcomers think, “Ah, not to worry!”
Valier’s town water mains were installed decades ago when water was cheap -- and, anyway, a life entitlement! No one could even conceive of denying water to another living thing! Clean piped water was basic. No meters were installed. Now I pay the same amount for water as everyone else, though I have no washing machine, no dishwasher, no bathtub (I shower), no automatic sprinkling system, and no hot tub. Many neighbors have all those things plus teenagers -- multiple bathrooms, always wet with use.
Several new households have been added to town. Pinky, next door, used to say that if all the leaks in the town water system were fixed, we’d have twice the pressure. On a hot summer afternoon one can step into the shower and get a mere dribble of water, while all over town the sprinklers are spraying away, watering the grass with expensively chlorinated potable water. No one ever thinks of installing a second parallel irrigation system of NON-potable water just for yards -- they only want green lawn. Think of the cost of a new system!
The town water/sewer bill keeps going up -- it was thirty-something dollars a month when I came in 1999 but now it’s fifty something. There’s a major sewer project coming this summer. We may have to drill another well. Installing meters would cost money. I listen constantly for the subtle singing that means something in my cobbled-up system is leaking under my house. One would think plumbers would be easier to find in a place like this, but they are not. The last work under this house cost $400.
Some towns in this fix have fallen for the idea of the privatized water system -- a company will just take over the system, own the improvements, and sell the water to the town efficiently. Tired citizens won’t have to worry their pointy heads over the problems of meeting legal requirements and standards or being sued for lead in the water or whatever. Just let the professionals take over and enjoy the the benefits of expertise. Luckily, in Montana we have the perfect two-word phrase for warding off this idea: Montana Power!! Deregulating that formerly-dependable heating entity allowed it to redefine itself as a half-baked cyber-enterprise that sold off the power system to square-headed Dakotans who are still mopping up the floor with our bank accounts and refusing to sell it back to us so we can re-regulate it. (The cyber part went bankrupt.) Let the Californians laugh about ripping off Aunt Millie! The Dakotans are taking ample revenge for all those jokes Montanans tell about them!
In a world that doesn’t value society, that doesn’t see anything wrong with draining little villages of their few amenities, that only respects profit in the ten per cent range, someone somewhere this very minute is trying to figure out how to sell you air to breathe. Probably they’re just waiting until the regular air is so polluted you’ll have to buy air in bottles, like the water.
In the meantime the newcomers to Valier -- their bankrolls all safely protected somewhere else -- are trying to legislate us into “cuteness” with pretty yards and newly painted houses, never giving a thought to how much our water and sewer are costing. After all, these old women living on $400 Social Security weren’t clerks that waited on THEM when they were young. These old men with tiny incomes never pumped THEIR gas for them. How can they feel any obligation?
As we head towards four dollar gas, we are looking around at each other in Valier. We have one gas station, one grocery store, no laundromat, and the state just passed a law saying that your neighbor can’t pick up your prescription for you when they have an errand at the county seat. There’s no bus service, the “Senior Surrey” doesn’t come to Valier, and it’s thirty miles to the next settlement. We are in this together.
Someone who has decided to move out west has asked me by email if I had any advice. I do. Bring your own air and water.
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