Tombstone Update

The saga of Tombstone and its water supply has taken yet another twist. This one involves an owl.

Actually, it's a spotted owl - or more precisely, a Mexican spotted owl (probably here illegally). The bird is just one more obstacle in Tombstone's efforts to repair its water supply pipeline. (Go here and here for the background story.)

The six Forest Service rangers suddenly crouched, whispering, on their way up the rocky mountain trail. It was early Friday afternoon, the first day of the Tombstone Shovel Brigade, and the rangers were out in force, hiking to the spot where dozens of volunteers worked with picks and shovels to move and bury Tombstone's makeshift water line.

Shhh! Look! Do you see it?

The rangers stopped in their tracks. Binoculars emerged from pockets, and fingers pointed to a stand of trees.

And there it was, a Mexican spotted owl, perched high in a pine tree. It was a male, the rangers said, with his back turned to the intruders. He scratched and preened. But mostly, the owl seemed to be watching the nest in a nearby sycamore tree where his mate tended to an owlet.

The owl is a threatened species, and until a few days ago its presence in fire-scorched Miller Canyon was a matter of speculation. But now that it has surfaced, the owl could be a game-changer in the water war between the U.S. Forest Service and the Wild West city made famous by the 30-second gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Tombstone is trying to repair a 26-mile pipeline that has brought mountain spring water into the city since 1881. It was damaged during last summer's Monument Fire and monsoon rains that brought mud, water and boulders crashing down the denuded slopes.

The Miller Peak Wilderness Area, where owls nest in the trees above Tombstone's pipeline, was hit particularly hard. Sections of pipeline simply vanished, and Tombstone's reservoir ran dry by August.

As for the owl, nobody could say for certain after the fire whether it would return. But it's the big reason why the Forest Service wouldn't simply hand Tombstone a permit to use heavy construction equipment to fix the pipeline. Tombstone responded by taking the feds to court. Since then, the conflict has escalated, taking on a life of its own.

"I'd love to say that this is a partisan issue and that if this administration changes, it's going to be all sweetness and light," said Caren Cowan, a Tombstone native who now heads the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association. "But I have 22 years of experience telling me otherwise. It's not a partisan issue."

Cowan said she has battled the Forest Service often on behalf of ranchers in her state and has found that "people in Washington just don't understand the West. They don't understand the wide open spaces and how we live and how we manage the land."

... Ken Ivory, a state representative from Utah, won passage of legislation that seeks to turn over federal land to his state. He says the conflict playing out in Tombstone is an example of the Forest Service dictating to, rather than working with, local government officials. He says the feds suddenly cut off Tombstone's access to springs and roads the city has maintained for 130 years under "an arbitrary and irrational federal policy."

As a result, Ivory said, Tombstone "is minutes away from going up in smoke" because it is "a wooden town in the middle of the desert in the middle of a drought."

At the center of the debate is the Mexican spotted owl.

"What is more important, owls or the people of Tombstone?" James Upchurch, a Forest Service supervisor who oversees the wilderness, was asked in court earlier this year.

Upchurch responded that there was no easy answer, which left jaws dropping on Tombstone's side of the courtroom.

No shit. My jaw would be dropping too.

So far, the Forest Service had been winning in court; Tombstone's request for an emergency injunction went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court but was turned down.

The feds seemed to be losing in the court of public opinion, though. Tombstone tells a compelling story, portraying the Forest Service as a rogue agency of obstructionist, tree-hugging bureaucrats. The Forest Service had offered little comment, and when it did say something, it sounded to the people of Tombstone, well, tree-hugging and bureaucratic.

The Forest Service granted permits Thursday for the city to bring the all-volunteer shovel brigade into the canyon to shore up the pipeline. Tombstone has until 8 p.m. Saturday to finish the job.

Permits??? You need a stinking PERMIT to take a shovel onto public land? What's next - a waiting period to buy one, and then registering them?

And a deadline? GMAFB. I thought these were public lands. Just what the hell do our esteemed overlords allow us to do on OUR public lands, anyway? Birdwatch?

Or just stand aside as illegal aliens and drug smugglers take over public land while the Border Patrol is prevented from entering it to enforce laws against human and narcotic trafficking?

The three-mile hike up the mountain was grueling in the 100-degree heat. The trail is steep and rocky, and some of the volunteers didn't make it to the top. Those who did found themselves moving boulders, digging trenches and sliding on gravelly slopes. Soaked with sweat, they staggered down the mountain after a couple of hours of hard labor.

"It's just a lot of manual labor," said Ben Headen, president of Tombstone's American Legion post. It was frustrating, he said, because "we shouldn't be doing it by manual labor, we should be using equipment."

Nobody is talking about paving over the whole gol-durned forest. It would take a something about the width of a one-lane road running 26 miles from Tombstone to the springs. It wouldn't even be a permanent passageway -- just a one-time short-term project to repair the pipeline. In a year or two it would be overgrown and unnoticeable.

Yet because of government regulations and bureaucratic fools a town full of people is in danger of withering and dying - if it doesn't burn to the ground first.

The inmates are truly running the asylum...