Things are heating up with the river coalition: lots of meetings and activity by the state agencies.

Some more money for flood relief projects is coming from HUD, so everyone is scrambling to prove they deserve a big piece of that pie. A part of the latest round is expected to go toward watershed restoration, which is a big help to all of us, but since it's HUD, there are rules: at least 50% must benefit low- to moderate-income households, and it cannot benefit owners of second homes.

It's hard to apply those rules to fixing our river because there is no single neighborhood in this canyon that is 100% primary residences. Without a waiver from HUD, in theory the watershed money could only be applied to a few properties along the river, skipping over their neighbors. But the river doesn't care how land is deeded: it flows past everyone.

At least 41% of the properties along the river are second homes, and not all of them are fancy ones: they were built before 1950 and have been passed down through families. Many of the owners are old and live out of state, never visiting their cabin for years on end. Many times, nobody comes until they die and the heirs have to figure out what to do with a place they never cared much about. And now it's got tens of thousands of dollars worth of flood damage to the river banks and channel that they are expected to deal with.

Tonight is a meeting for our river master plan process, but it was inadvertently scheduled for the same time as a memorial service for the 144 people who drowned on July 31, 1976, and the two who died in the September 2013 flood. Canyon residents will have to choose which one to go to, and even if they weren't going to go to the memorial service, they will hold a grudge against the river coalition for being so insensitive.

Want to know my mantra for tonight? Not my circus. Not my monkeys. Nobody lets me make decisions, so I'm just along for the show.






The green hose is our pump intake for (legal) pumping of water from the river for irrigation.