The trails committee, spearheaded by Ed Zumwalt and Loanne Barnes, has done considerable work, and is well on its way to completing the application.

In the coming years, all of our communities will be faced with decisions impacting the river—both small and large. To make good decisions, it is important that people be thinking about the river in its broadest context, beyond the passions or fears brought about by a flood or crisis.

For that reason, Form Tomorrow and Z-Arts! are sponsoring a writing contest—to encourage citizens who live near to the Virgin River and its tributaries, to write about the river, and specifically their experiences with the river. We are not seeking opinion pieces, or political writing, but either fiction, or personal essays about your relationship with the river. Stories and experiences, whether profound or simple, good or bad, help to illuminate the place the river has in all of our lives.

Form Tomorrow and Z-Arts! will offer prizes in several categories: Best Adult Fiction, Best Adult Non-Fiction, Best Young Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction, Best Youth Fiction/Non-Fiction, and Readers Choice, chosen by visitors to the website. The writings will be gathered on Form Tomorrow’s website, and will be available for all to read. A panel made up of Form Tomorrow Staff and Z-Arts! Board members will curate the pieces and will prepare them inclusion in an e-book anthology.

The river is at the center of our communities. Join with us as we celebrate its presence and learn about each other.

Peter Stempel

River Work

Form Tomorrow, in collaboration with Z Arts,  is excited to announce River Work.  The river is such an essential part of all of our communities that we thought it important to reflect on its roll in all of our lives.  So much attention of late has focused on flooding and bank armoring: River Work offers local residents, writers and students the opportunity to reflect on the river in a much broader sense.  We hope that through this writing, people will become more engaged with the river and their communities.  As important, we hope that these writings will inspire a broader awareness and discussion of the roll the river plays in all of our lives.

The writing contest includes categories for both fiction and non-fiction.  In keeping with Form Tomorrow’s core philosophies there is no editorial category, rather, emphasis in the non-fiction category is focused on journal entries and personal essays–writings that will expand our understanding.  We are excited to be presenting this opportunity, and, to offer the space here on Form Tomorrow’s website for your enjoyment of these works.

We hope that you will consider participating, and, that you will encourage people you know–young and old, to consider contributing to the project.

Click here to download the complete River Work contest prospectus and rules located in the Knowledge Base. . . .

Click here to read the introductory essay located in our Blog. . . .

A series of prizes are being offered:

$250, Best Adult Work of Fiction.
$250, Best Adult Work of Non Fiction.
$150, Best Young Adult Work; Fiction or Non-Fiction.
$150, Best Youth Work; Fiction or Non-Fiction.
$250, Readers Choice in any category; chosen by visitors to the website.

David and Lucile Packard Foundation Supports Form Tomorrow in 2012 and 2013 .  .  .  .  .

We have been fortunate to receive funding from private donations, and from a generous two year grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.  This funding follows up on funding that the foundation granted to Form Tomorrow in 2010.  As important, the grant we are receiving extends into 2013.  While this is a start, we can always use your help–please consider contributing  even a small amount to our efforts.

Education To Action

Following on the unparalleled success of the 2011 Education to Action Program, Form Tomorrow has secured funding for at least two Education to Action teams in 2012.

One team is already committed to examining the prospects for flood plane conservation around the Virgin River Corridor in an effort to reduce the need for future bank armoring.  Winter floods that took place a year ago moved this issue of both safety and ecology to the forefront, and, Form Tomorrow is responding.

The second team is not yet committed, however, the Town of Leeds has expressed a serious interest in completing design work and presentation materials for a Mining Heritage Trail.  This trail represents an important synthesis of history, recreation, and economic development.  It is perfectly suited for the Education to Action Program.

Towns, if you are interested in doing a project with Form Tomorrow, let us know!  There is still time before the April 1st Town submission deadline.

Students, it’s time to start getting excited!

Form Tomorrow wins 2010 Western Planner, Stan Steadman Article of the Year Award

Elissa Black and Peter Stempel were awarded Western Planner Magazine’s 2010 Stan Steadman Article of the Year Award for their article, Putting Boots on the Ground, Lessons on Small Town Planning From Southwest Utah. This article chronicled key lessons that Form Tomorrow learned through its work in the wake of the 2007 Vision Dixie process.  It also detailed critical innovations in the process of engaging the public that Form Tomorrow championed.  Thanks to Ken Sizemore of the Five County Association of Governments for receiving the award on our behalf at a recent conference.

Thanks Elissa, for your incredible contributions to that work and to Form Tomorrow.  After working with Form Tomorrow, Elissa Black  was selected to lead Southern Utah University’s Utah Prarie Dog Recovery Implementation Program.  Her selection for this difficult and complex job is testimony to her considerable ability and commitment to fairness.  Elissa tells us that she is moving to a new opportunity, and leaving Southern Utah University.  We wish her luck with her pursuits–and we know that she will continue to do important and inspiring work.

Form Tomorrow Featured

We are excited about a recent feature article about Form Tomorrow in the Spectrum–this is, by far, the best most representative article about Form Tomorrow that has ever been published in any paper.  It clearly articulates our philosophy of supporting Citizens, Towns, and Cities in doing the work that they choose to do.  As we always say, good planning comes from engaging and supporting people in their communities, real local involvement.   If you missed the article, it was featured in the January 10th, 2012 Spectrum.  The full text is available online at the Spectrum’s website to Subscribers.

Leeds Town Council will consider the project tonight–If you are a Leeds resident, we encourage you to weigh in the prospect of this project, however you feel.  Your input–in support or against, will help to make the entire project and process better if it is to proceed.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has funded Form Tomorrow’s efforts in the past, and, we greatly appreciate this continued support.

General Plans have no direct impact on ordinance, or existing development.  Rather, the general plan sets a vision twenty five years into the future.  It is used to guide the making of future policies and ordinances, and as a way to evaluate requested changes to the ordinances or zoning–does a particular change or revision further the vision the town has for its own future.  The general plan is the leading edge of policy, but not policy in itself.

Several steps are required before any change to policy can be effected, and this is deliberate.  Having multiple steps to achieve any end ensures that the plan and subsequent policy reflect the will of the community.

We welcome their support, and their open mindedness.

Thank You!

“REGULAR DIVISION LINES FOR PASTURAGE FARMS NOT PRACTICABLE.

Many a brook which runs but a short distance will afford sufficient water for a number of pasturage farms; but if the lands are surveyed in regular tracts as square miles or townships, all the water sufficient for a number of pasturage farms may fall entirely within one division. If the lands are thus Surveyed, only the divisions having water will be taken, and the farmer obtaining title to such a division or farm could practically occupy all the country adjacent by owning the water necessary to its use. For this reason divisional surveys should conform to the topography, and be so made as to give the greatest number of water fonts. For example, a brook carrying water sufficient for the irrigation of 200 acres of land might be made to serve for the irrigation or 20 acres to each of ten farms, and also supply the water for all the stock that could live on ten pasturage farms, and ten small farmers could have homes. But if the water was owned by one man, nine would be excluded from its benefits and nine tenths of the land remain in the hands of the government.”

John Wesley Powell: Report on the lands of the arid region of the United States, with a more detailed account of the lands of Utah : with maps – John Wesley Powell, Grove Karl Gilbert, Clarence Edward Dutton, Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region (U.S.), Almon Harris Thompson, Willis Drummond, Page 22

There are a substantial number of writings about a map taken from John Wesley Powell’s Report on the lands of the arid region of the United States, with a more detailed account of the lands of Utah, in which watershed boundaries are shown superimposed upon the political divisions. Powell himself proposed that watershed boundaries become significant districts, if not political divisions in themselves. It has, to many people, become a symbol of the West that wasn’t—a West in which we would live in harmony with the natural world, at least as much harmony as was possible at the end of the 19^th century. While the short version of the story is true enough, it generally overlooks through omission the degree to which Powell challenged the basic foundations of water law, land division, and land grants that are largely unquestioned parts of our history today. In his specific proposal Powell suggests that the mechanisms of the Homestead Act (1862) be reconsidered in light of the climactic conditions of the Western landscape. He proposed two specific types of farms, irrigation farms and pasturage farms, one smaller and one much larger than traditional homestead act tracts of 160 acres. Even more radically, he proposed that water rights be wed to the land, and that congress reconsider the extent of grants offered the railroads.

His proposal is more than a formal one. While Powell might have preferred (as indicated in one section of the document) that engineers more suitably define the divisions of the land, the presence of settlers in the land with their requisite self interests made that impossible. For that reason, Powell proposed that settlers work collectively, in such a way that no individual could monopolize the use of water. In his proposal, the division of land is made neither by an individual, nor by writ of the Federal Government, but by local negotiations withing the larger framework he proposes that the Federal Government adopt. Those in closest contact with the specific conditions of the land, who best know the local condition, would be empowered to shape the divisions to the best ends, rather than be forced to channel water into an arbitrary pattern as dictated by the grid that was “so in vogue.” (the last being Powell’s words).

The radical nature of Powell’s proposal, in my mind, was the implicit way it made the provision of water the fundamental underpinning of political organization in the communities. Put another way, the politics of any region would be intimately wed with the stewardship of the specific watershed as defined by the irrigation district which would inevitably be formed around the practical distribution of water. The order of operations being of utmost importance—the shape of the community based upon the drainage. This contrasts greatly, in my mind, with what is evidenced to have happened in the extant pattern of development, that is that political bodies were formed that sought out water, and created irrigation schemes, many of which were complicated by arbitrary land divisions. The local vision within Powell’s plan mirrors the larger regional vision he famously put forth.

Powell does more than argue for a different method of land division, he argues that the rights to water should not be inappropriately abstracted from the land. Powell notes that application of the common law, specifically prior appropriation (still the law of the land to this day), was potentially disastrous when applied to arid regions. He foresaw a situation where the dislocation of water from the land could create perverse economies and even tyrannies. For those reasons, he proposed that,“The right to use water should inhere in the land to be irrigated, and the water rights should go with the land titles.” He struggled (my supposition based on his prose) with the fact that the basic creation of a water right necessarily abstracted water from the land. The removal of water from the stream channel was an irrevocable act—that until the water evaporated and returned in the form of precipitation, it was gone forever. While he could not prevent the essential abstraction, by connecting water rights to a piece of land one could avoid their inevitable conveyance, dislocation and concentration. Moreover, he sought to avoid an economy of water in which land itself had no real value due to the absence of water. That these sentiments so clearly anticipate the fights that lead to the construction of the Hoover Dam and the Colorado River Compact, the cornerstones that define the politics of water in the West to this day, should be enough to give anyone pause.

Reading the Report on the lands of the arid region of the United States, with a more detailed account of the lands of Utah, one comes to understand Powell as someone who understands the land, the people, and the forces shaping the land—a witness to a history unfolding, making a plea to alter the course of human events. One reads, in the defense of his division scheme, the tealeaves of the arguments used against him. Having dealt with nightmares of unclear title in the East, the congress was preoccupied with the orderly and rigorous division of the land, without cadastral incongruity. Powell artfully acknowledges the thousands of people that already work the land, and the extent of their occupation and the way in which his vision already represented significant change to the status quo. He sees the way in which the railways are transforming the nation. One senses that he argued against the future to come, even as he saw it unfolding before him.

Perhaps it is foolish to reflect on plans not realized, and to hold some romance for what is arguably a pastoral vision of the rapidly urbanizing and ‘suburbanizing’ West. Yet, returning to the quote at the head of the essay it is plain to see that the essential prophecy is true—our communities are disproportionately weighted in those areas that are most arable, and, the land there most exploited, with the vast bulk of the West in the hands of the Federal Government. The fundamental disconnections and dislocations of water from land have similarly come to pass, and, in the end, I spend my days imagining ways that we could knit ourselves and the landscape we live in back together.