Water rights

At work the other day, I was streaming NPR through iTunes while eating lunch and heard this story about water issues in Nevada and Arizona, an area that has been experiencing a 11-year drought but at the same time is developing at a rapid pace, with green golf courses and artificial lakes. The town of Mesquite in Nevada is purchasing water, quite cheaply, from the state of Arizona. They are able to do this because of laws saying that water is a commodity that cannot be restricted in trade. This is causing worries in Beaver Dam, Arizona, which is also tight for water, and as described by one of the citizens of Beaver Dam, is creating a situation of "your development versus my development."

As most people probably would be, I was appalled at not just the quantity of development going on, but the type of development in Mesquite as it was described in the story. I understand somewhat the reason why water, as something we all need, cannot be restricted in trade between states. But why isn't someone restricting the development that is going on in these arid areas? Why the lush golf courses and new lakes? It seems like, in an area that has been experiencing drought for over a decade, local municipalities should disallow, or at least make extremely expensive, developments that do the opposite of converse water. If you can't make water expensive, at least make the wasting of water expensive. Of course, maybe the local government in Nevada doesn't care about the wasting of water, as long as it's Arizona's water.

Old job/new job

This week was fairly eventful. On Thursday afternoon I drove out to Beaverton for the groundbreaking ceremony for Merlo Station Apartments. Merlo Station Apartments is the 128-unit, transit-oriented affordable housing development that I assisted with as an intern for about three months. It was a position I took following the end of my AmeriCorps term last summer, with Tualatin Valley Housing Partners, which is the non-profit community development corporation(CDC)I was serving with for AmeriCorps. It was exciting to witness this point of the process. Much of what I did at TVHP as the Community Development intern was assist with financial due dilligence, and to hear that the project had closed and was beginning construction, after all the obstacles and delays, was heart-warming. It was also nice to see my old colleagues again after a few months. Now that I finally have my driver's license, I can drop by TVHP more frequently just to say hi, or grab lunch with my old boss. Though the horrible, crawling rush-hour traffic I encountered on my way home was almost enough to quash that idea completely.

Today I started a new job, a very part-time position with the Community Alliance of Tenants. I've served as a volunteer with the Community Alliance of Tenants for over a year now, answering questions for tenants regarding Landlord-Tenant Law on the Renter's Rights Hotline. Recently CAT received a grant to partner with local county and city health and habitability agencies to do a needs assessment for substandard housing in Portland. So they hired me and a few others to develop tools for researching substandard housing in Portland and its impact on the health of tenants. This focus was based on research they did last year wherein they discovered that a startling percentage of tenants who called the hotline because their landlords were not doing repairs attributed health issues to their housing conditions.

Today I went through a few months of log sheets from the renter's rights hotline, picking out and copying logs from the appropriate geographic areas for tenants that called about repair issues. Later we'll do outreach to these individuals to gather more information. It was fairly monotonous work, but I don't mind that kind of work occasionally, and I came across some old logs that I had completed in my first weeks as a hotline volunteer, which was kind of interesting. All in all it's a nice situation--I'll be working only about 4 hours a week, for the next 16 months, which seems like an odd schedule but works well because it brings in a little extra money without being a huge commitment. Soon I'll have keys to the church where CAT is headquartered, so I'll be able to come in and do work whenever is convenient for me, and the church is within comfortable biking distance both from NCI and home. It's nice when you can get paid for something you were already volunteering to do.