Water Witches

by Chris Bohjalian

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  wondering where he'd be if he hadn't discovered that some invention of his that he thought helped people actually caused cancer."

  "I wish the stakes were that high. I'd feel better about all this."

  "In some ways, they are. You've said yourself you're doing this because of the drought, because something has changed in Vermont. You've said yourself you're doing this because you saw the catamounts with Miranda"

  "And if I'd seen them alone?"

  "I hope you'd be doing exactly the same thing."

  "We'll never know. But I doubt it," I tell her, saying those words for no other reason than to be argumentative. To be hurtful.

  "I don't. It's not like you've spent the last twenty years of your life doing what you do because you feel so damn strong about defending high utility rates or high phone bills." She shakes her head. "You just like to be where the power is!"

  Patience glances in our direction, motioning with a nod of her head that we should hurry up.

  "I do like to be where the power is. I'm not shy about admitting that. And do you know why? It's not ego. It's pragmatism. It's because in Vermont, the only people who can pay hundreds of dollars an hour for my services are the people in power. So you're right, I do like to be where the power is."

  "Well, maybe that's changing. Maybe you've moved to the right side just in time."

  "Nothing's going to change," I tell her slowly. "As long as people who insist on wearing sandals in November represent things like the Chittenden River or the trees on Mount Republic, nothing's going to change."

  Annoyed with me, Laura says, "You haven't answered my question. Who has the better experts? What do you think will happen this afternoon?"

  I sigh. "My prediction? Powder Peak's experts won't be able to defend tapping the Chittenden. And they might not be able

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  to defend building the holding pond where it's currently planned. But they will make your daughter and your husbandat least your husbandlook like raving idiots."

  Laura wipes her hands one more time with the napkin.

  "And what will all that mean?" she asks. "They won't be able to use the Chittenden to make snow, but they will be able to build the trails where you saw the catamounts?"

  "Yup. They'll rip down so many trees that a squirrel won't find shademuch less a mountain lion."

  Ignoring the melodrama in my response, Laura says, "That will upset Miranda, you realize."

  "I realize that. But the overall decision will probably satisfy most of the maniacs in the Copper Project. And while it won't thrill Powder Peak, the Board will have thrown the resort a pretty good-sized bone. No, my love," I continue, unable to mask the irritation in my voice, "the only two complete losers in this whole fiasco are your husband and your daughter."

  Throughout the afternoon, my allies for years explain Powder Peak's desperate need to make snow, and Vermont's desperate need for Powder Peak. Evidently, John Bussey plans to make the economic arguments for expansion first, and then wrap up with his environmental defense.

  "Those are the numbers," says Claude Cousino, the director of Vermont's Agency of Economic Development. "If Powder Peak gets to build those new trails and make some new snow, we believe it will create somewhere around four hundred jobs in this area."

  Kimberly McDonnell, an economics professor at Lyndon State College, explains with sardonic glee, "The formula is simple. Vermont needs between six and seven hundred million dollars in tax revenue every year. It can get it from places like Powder Peak, or it can get it from private citizens via property taxes. But it will get it, because that's what it takes to run this state."

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  And Sara Chesmen, head of the Vermont Ski Areas Consortium, tells the Board in a voice that is even and assured, "Vermont mountains don't get anywhere near the same snowfall as our competitors out west, and skiers have figured that out. Every year, more and more of them head west to Colorado or Utah. In my opinion, if the Vermont ski industry is not allowed to make snow, it will eventually cease to exist. At least at its current size."

  "How many ski resorts were there in Vermont twenty or twenty-five years ago?" John asks her, using what has always been one of my favorite questions.

  "Well, as recently as 1971 there were eighty-one."

  "How many are there now?"

  "Nineteen. That's how sick the Vermont ski industry is. We've lost three-quarters of our ski resorts in a couple of decades, and now people are willing to throw away one of the remaining industry jewels. I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to allow Powder Peak to expand."

  It had crossed my mind that John Bussey might end the day with Ian Rawls, expecting the resort's managing director to make an impassioned and eloquent plea for expansion. It would not have been my strategy, however, because I have worked with Ian for years, and I know that while he is a solid and capable manager, he is a mediocre public speaker.

  John must have known this too. Immediately after the short recess, he brings Ian to the front of the room to testify. That means Powder Peak will end the hearing with a hydrologist from the Department of Fish and Wildlife, followed by one or both of the trackers from the University of Colorado.

  "If we don't have snowmaking, we don't open," Ian says at one point.

  "Snowmaking today is every bit as important as chair lifts were twenty-five years ago," he adds. "Can you imagine a ski

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  resort without chair lifts? Of course not. Well, that's how important snowmaking is now in Vermont."

  Dawn wanders over toward the table behind which Ian is sitting. "How many trails at Powder Peak currently have snowmaking?"

  "Forty-eight."

  "How many would have snow if you were able to complete your planned expansion?"

  He sits back in his seat, and then, when he realizes he is slouching, he slides forward. "Well, if we'd gotten everything we wanted ... needed ... if we had gotten the full approvals, we would be able to make snow on fifty-nine trails."

  "What do you mean, 'if we had gotten everything we needed'?"

  "We think we should be able to use the Chittenden even if the river's running at one half of a cubic foot per second. But our permit only allows us to use the river if it remains at three quarters of a cubic foot per second."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning we probably can't expand snowmaking to fifty-nine trails."

  "How many trails can you add to the system at three quarters of a cubic foot per second?"

  "Our engineering studies show we can probably add another eight trails."

  "Giving you fifty-six?"

  "Yes ... right."

  Dawn begins to circle Ian, wandering around his table in a wide arc. "You've said that your resort cannot survive without your new permits."

  "I've said that, sort of. Yes. Sort of."

  "So your resort's entire survival depends upon being able to make snow on eight more trails? Is that right?"

  "Well, that's mislead"

  "You're claiming that Powder Peak's entire survival depends

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  upon increasing snowmaking coverage from forty-eight out of seventy-one trails to fifty-six out of seventy-one trails," she continues, repeating the sort of thing I said with a straight face almost all summer. "You're saying that if Powder Peak is not allowed to increase its snowmaking coverage from sixty-seven percent to seventy-nine percent it will go out of business. Is that accurate?"

  He slumps forward a tiny bit, his upper body beginning to sag.

  "What I said was ... was ... what I meant was we need snowmaking."

  "You've got snowmaking!" Dawn says, laughing. "You've got snowmaking on two-thirds of your resort!"

  Ian looks toward Mitch Valine, pleading to be excused with his eyes, but Mitch merely looks down at his notes.

  "Well, we need more," Ian says finally, speaking to no one in particular.

  If I were Dawn, I would now move on. She has hur
t Ian about as much as she can on this issue, without either alienating the Board or risking the sort of desperate, but occasionally successful, counterattack of which a wounded animal is capable. It's clear, however, that she is not yet ready to end this line of questioning, and I find myself almost trying to will her ahead.

  "How much more, Mr. Rawls? One hundred percent coverage? Will that satisfy you?"

  "It's not that simple."

  "No? Your plan isn't simply to tap the river until there's nothing"

  "Our plan is to keep Powder Peak profitable and to keep people employed," Ian says, rallying.

  Instinctively I look away when I hear Dawn asking, "Eight trails will do all that?" I know Ian well, and I know she has now given him too much room.

  "We wouldn't spend fifteen million dollars for snow on eight new trails, or on eleven new trails," he says, his voice becoming angry. "Yes, the new system will allow us to add snow-

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  making to another ten percent of the mountain, but it will also allow us to make snow on a lot of other trails a lot more profitably. A lot more competitively. And those eight trails you keep talking about are indeed an important part of the resort. Maybe they only represent another ten percent of the mountain, but they're halfone-half, Ms. Ciandellaof our beginner runs. We have to get new skiers to survive, and that means having beginner trails with snow all season long.''

  Dawn watches him for a long second, gathering her thoughts. Instantly Ian fills the void, continuing, "And don't forget, the snowmaking is only one part of the whole expansion. There's the gondola, there are new lifts, and there are all those new trails on Mount Republic. That's part of the fifteen million dollar price tag too. That's what we need to survive."

  Across the aisle from us John Bussey tries hard not to smile. Beside me, Laura chews on her nails and Reedy looks down at his shoes.

  "It's a trade-off, we understand that," Bolton McKenna admits to Dawn under oath. "I'll be the first to admit that we're letting the river fall a little lower than I'd normally like."

  McKenna, a hydrologist with Vermont's Department of Fish and Wildlife, signed the permits that allow the resort to use the Chittenden River to make snow, even if the water flow slows dramatically.

  "Then why did you do it? Jobs?"

  He shrugs. "I guess. Sometimes you have to make compromises."

  "Do you understand that your permit is in direct opposition to the guidelines established by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service?"

  He shakes his head. "No, it's not. It may be opposed to the computer model, but it doesn't oppose any rules. It doesn't violate anything. All rivers are different. I don't see any reason to use a computer model as gospel."

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  "We're not dealing with just any computer model here. We're talking about the computer model that every single ski area in the state of Vermont uses. Except, evidently, Powder Peak."

  Bolton McKenna stares at Dawn, but says nothing.

  "This morning," she continues, "two other aquatic experts testified that it is absolutely incomprehensibleincomprehensiblethat Powder Peak should be allowed to tap the Chittenden at the level you and the District Five Commission have allowed. And yet you call it merely a compromise."

  "I could probably find you two experts who would agree with me," Bolton says.

  Ignoring him, Dawn asks, "Now the Chittenden River was studied well before the severity of this drought became clear, right?"

  "That's right."

  "You read the Powder Peak hydrologist's report four months ago, and you signed the permits two months ago. Has the drought changed your mind?"

  "About?"

  "About the hydrologist's findings?"

  "I'll stand by 'em."

  "You honestly do not believe that this drought will leave scars on the Chittenden River?"

  "I didn't say that," Bolton answer quickly. "I just said that I stand by my permit."

  "Does that mean this drought could be inflicting long-term damage on the Chittenden River?"

  Behind me, the rows of people who have been fidgeting, stretching their legs, disappearing with increasing frequency to the water fountains and bathrooms scattered throughout the statehouse, stop moving.

  "Let me ask you the question more plainly," Dawn continues. "Has this drought hurt the river?"

  He rubs the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "It may have."

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  "Is that yes?"

  "Yeah. I guess it is."

  "If you yourself were asked right now to examine the Chittenden River, would you authorize water withdrawals for snowmaking once the flow is back up to three quarters of a cubic foot per second?"

  He sighs, frustrated. "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because the river's low."

  "Do you mean that it has been hurt?"

  "Yes."

  Dawn watches Bolton for a long moment, hoping the silence will force him to elaborate on his answer. Finally: "Yes. It has been hurt."

  "The river, you mean."

  "Yes."

  Dawn nods, satisfied.

  "There were absolutely no tracks that could have belonged to a catamount. There were no prints of sufficient size, and no prints of sufficient gait," Professor Carl Macomber of Colorado State University tells John Bussey. The sun is now well below the mountains west of Montpelier, and the room has grown dark. It's after six o'clock. Fortunately, Macomber is the last witness.

  "Gait?"

  "Stride," the professor explains. "There were no prints made by an animal with a stride long enough to have been a catamount."

  John lets the answer settle before continuing. Then: "In that case, Professor, what do you believe the Winstons saw?"

  Macomber takes a deep breath. "I will speculate on what they saw," he says, "but please remember that I really am merely speculating."

  "That's fine," John reassures him. "Could the Winstons have seen feral cats?"

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  "They could have. They could even have seen fisher cats, but I think that possibility is rather remote."

  "But theythe animalscould have been fisher cats," John continues quickly, trying to get the professor back on track.

  "Yes, sure." Macomber is probably my age, but his hair is grayer and his skin more wrinkled. Perhaps because I envision him wandering around out west in the sun, trailing mountain lions through Colorado and Wyoming, he looks to me a bit like a cowboy.

  "Basically, the Winstons could have seen any one of a dozen different kinds of wildlife," John adds.

  "Basically."

  "Except catamounts. What they saw was not, in your opinion, a family of catamounts."