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鈥淩ibbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of Modern sa国际传媒官网网页入口鈥� is an impactful, well-crafted book that uncomplicates a multiplicity of complex river-related subjects.

How do you grow a city when a river runs through it?

How do you control a river, the book asks, whose levels have often varied wildly and become increasingly uncontrollable into the early 20th century?

In some years the river has flooded nearby 鈥� and not so nearby 鈥� villages, pastures, farmland and pueblos in the river valley, leaving swamps behind.

Other years the flow was a trickle, resulting in a build-up of alkali sediment.

The river in question is the Rio Grande, specifically some 150 miles of it between Cochiti Pueblo and Socorro. Or what鈥檚 known as the Middle Rio Grande Valley.

The city being planned was sa国际传媒官网网页入口.

The dilemma was how to manage the river鈥檚 flow so it doesn鈥檛 inundate the roads of the city you are building. In 1880 the city welcomed the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway as a stop and as a home for a railyard.

The AT&SF arrived alright, but even in the 1890s, the railroad was taking safety precautions; it was dropping off its passengers 30 miles upstream from sa国际传媒官网网页入口, the book notes.

Maybe the railroad stop in the Duke City would be too swampy for passengers to step into.

Authors John Fleck and Robert P. Berrens write that with the railroad line in place, the city鈥檚 businesses hoped to become the state鈥檚 economic engine.

The city was sporting banks, insurance companies, wool processors and warehouses in New Town.

Those enterprises surrounded the Commercial Club, a four-story building constructed in 1891. The building, the book states, was 鈥渁 monument to the new city鈥檚 ambitions.鈥�

But those ambitions were still floundering 25 years after the building鈥檚 construction, 鈥渟wamped by an increasingly unmanageable Rio Grande.鈥�

As the book鈥檚 preface states, 鈥淚n high-flow years, valley residents would nervously work to reinforce a dike eight miles upstream as the river rose in the spring. When they lost the battle 鈥� as they often did 鈥� the Rio Grande would spill into the old flood channel where they had built Fourth Street, spreading water across the valley they were trying to turn into a city.鈥�

In the early 1920s, something happened to potentially change the battle plans 鈥� the passage of a state law that created a new governmental agency 鈥� the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.

The authors call the district the heart of the book鈥檚 story.

The district was bestowed the job of managing the flow in those 150 miles of the river and thereby helping to build the city of sa国际传媒官网网页入口.

However, the preface states, the district鈥檚 rule-making caused a tangle of conflicts 鈥渙ver who would have a say in the city鈥檚 formation and who would have to pay for the work to be done.鈥�

Three main groups were in the midst of that tangle.

For one, Anglo city builders, represented by Aldo Leopold, wrote the rules for the district and in doing so held a great deal of political power.

(This is the same Aldo Leopold, who years earlier was tasked with squeezing Taos Pueblo out of the Carson National Forest to maximize the forest鈥檚 timber yields. And the same Aldo Leopold who would later gain national fame as an environmentalist.)

Another group in the Conservancy District entanglement was small-scale farmers led by Bernalillo County Commissioner Max Gutierrez. Gutierrez initially backed the plans for the district, then opposed it when he saw 鈥渉is community taxed beyond its ability to pay without being given a direct say,鈥� the preface said.

The farmers felt the taxes on flood control improvements were bankrupting them.

A third group, according to the preface, was made up of Middle Rio Grande pueblos and headed by Pablo Abeita of Isleta Pueblo. This group lent its support to the conservancy district鈥檚 plan because it would ensure the pueblos of the Middle Rio Grande a future as sovereign communities.

The preface cites several injustices that were entwined in the district鈥檚 governance.

One significant injustice the book referenced occurred decades later, in the 1960s 鈥� the construction of Cochiti Dam, which is on the Rio Grande at Cochiti Pueblo.

The earthen dam, the book states in Chapter 6 (鈥淧ueblo Sovereignty鈥�), 鈥渟liced through the heart of Cochiti鈥檚 world.鈥� It is one of the key subjects in the chapter and written like an apologia.

Baker Morrow, editor of the University of New Mexico Press鈥� series of which 鈥淩ibbons of Green鈥� is a part, said the water 鈥渋mpounded behind the dam flooded the pueblo鈥檚 farming areas and, in my opinion, the pueblo was not sufficiently consulted whether the dam should go in.鈥�

The series is called the 鈥淣ew Century Gardens and Landscapes of the American Southwest.鈥�

The authors of the book are Fleck, a former sa国际传媒官网网页入口 reporter, who is a writer in residence at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center at the UNM Law School, and Berrens, an environmental economist and a regents professor in UNM鈥檚 economics department.

In a phone interview, Fleck raised what he called 鈥渁 weird sidelight鈥� to consider alongside the book鈥檚 main storyline 鈥� the importance of bridges as a community building tool.

Greater sa国际传媒官网网页入口, after all, astrides the river.