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DissidentRage wrote

Dan Perry sees it differently. He bought the first section of his Trout Stalker Ranch in northern New Mexico in 2011, when the Rio Chamita that runs through it flowed Technicolor with toxic magnesium, phosphorus, and other chemicals leaked from the wastewater treatment plant upstream. He worked with the New Mexico governor to secure $8m for a cleanup effort.

“Now there’s clean water coming out of the Chamita,” he says proudly. Perry has easements on the north and south end of his property for public river access, but he restricts the majority of the waterway with a cable across the river hung with a No Trespassing sign. He feels he’s protecting his investment in restoring stream health. “Private property owners are some of the biggest conservation stewards right now,” he says. “I feel like the beauty of our lands and species survival is up to private landowners.”

You should be forming coalitions to clean up the environment, then, not using it as an excuse to close it off behind lock and key. This is clearly a ploy to make the idea of privatizing water palatable. The moment they have it all locked up, access is going to be a commodity, as it happened with another given example in the article.

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