Water Matters!
The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Water Matters! podcast looks at water and natural resources issues in New Mexico and beyond. Housed at the University of New Mexico School of Law, the Utton Transboundary Resources Center is a state-funded research and public service project that believes in the pursuit of well informed, collaborative solutions to our natural resource challenges. The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Sairis Perez-Gomez designed the podcast logo and wrote and performed our theme music and Student Research Assistant Francesca Glaspell produced this episode.
Rin Tara is a staff attorney specializing in water policy and governance at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center. They are primarily interested in questions of water management in the face of climate change. They have done work in riparian restoration, river connectivity, tribal water sovereignty, climate change adaptation, and water rights. They have authored several papers on topics related to the future of western water management.
John Fleck is Writer in Residence at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico School of Law; and Professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance in the University of New Mexico Department of Economics. The former director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program, he is the author of four books on water in the west, including the forthcoming history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande – Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City.
Water Matters!
15: John Fleck on Tending the Middle Rio Grande Garden
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In this week’s Water Matters, John Fleck switches from the host’s chair to the guest’s chair (it’s really the same chair) as co-host Rin Tara sits down with him to talk about the new book he and Bob Berrens wrote, Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of Modern Albuquerque. From Voltaire’s Candide to the myth of a lost Garden of Eden on the Rio Grande Valley floor, Rin and John talk about how the effort to manage a river shaped the modern garden Albuquerque has become, and what lessons the process might have for the challenges our community faces in a climate changed world.