New Mexico’s Water in 2025: Harsh Realities, Real Risks

2025 posed many New Mexico water resources challenges, a mixed record of accomplishments for New Mexico’s water resources agencies, and a degree of success for the New Mexico Water Advocates’ work. We are grateful for over 600 new subscribers this year.

The New Mexico Water Advocates is a New Mexico nonprofit corporation and a 501(c)3. We are an informed citizens’ advocacy group that frames our water resource both as essential civic infrastructure and as a sacred right. We have institutional memory and advocate for planning and taking a long-term view. We do our best to communicate the urgency and consequences of New Mexico’s institutionalized water management neglect.

Water is life. Life is sacred. Water in the desert is precious, not a commodity. We must pay attention to growing water scarcity and chronic, unsustainable overuse.

New Mexico’s water resources management problems and opportunities came into sharper focus in 2025. Most water management problems grew. It is fair to say there were few bright spots with more neglect and excuses than progress.

 

What We Did in 2025

The Water Advocates’ highlights for the year include:

• A new website with many articles and substantial growth in engagement
• Invited testimony confronting New Mexico’s water crises before the Legislature’s Water and Natural Resources Committee and participation in interim committee meetings
• A focus on New Mexico’s interstate stream compact litigation and risk
• Deep engagement in the ongoing ISC rulemaking for the regional water security planning program
• Continued production of our monthly third -Thursday-evenings speakers series
• Attention to produced water, Project Jupiter, and data centers
• Expansion of public conversations across faith and civic groups
• Board retreat to set our strategic priorities

What Became Clear in 2025

• The Rio Grande Compact litigation that has been before the U.S. Supreme Court since 2013 proposed a detailed settlement in August that is agreed to by all the parties and amici except Las Cruces and NMSU. The settlement requires further negotiation with them. New Mexico’s explicit responsibilities will be challenging and expensive.
• The State Engineer’s FY27 budget request to the Governor says, “Failure to comply with New Mexico’s interstate obligations could result in renewed litigation and the risk of adverse court rulings that could mandate severe curtailment of groundwater use in the lower Rio Grande, with catastrophic consequences for the economy.”
• Unless New Mexico’s water management agencies can achieve an unprecedented decrease in Middle Rio Grande water depletions within the next two years, New Mexico will violate the Middle Rio Grande water delivery debt limit. Texas will sue New Mexico in a new case.
• Aridification is taking our water.  This is not a drought. Droughts are temporary. We are at risk of desertification.
• Overuse of water is rampant and unaddressed, even when illegal.
• Predominant short-term thinking to address water problems only when we run out or a judge orders action is still the State of New Mexico norm.
• Wells are running dry in rural and exurban areas. The Ogallala Aquifer is the poster child for groundwater management neglect, with communities, institutions, and municipalities as victims.
• New Mexico has some of the worst cases nationally of military base gross contamination of actively used groundwater.
• The Governor’s “new water” funding and political priorities are years from bearing fruit if they are possible and economically feasible. Produced water treatment and reuse may not be feasible. Nobody is showing their math.
• Brackish water development is years away at best. The water will be costly in the limited locations where development is hydrogeologically and economically feasible.
• The Rio Grande is becoming an intermittent stream due to overuse.
• The Legislature’s will to ignore the water crisis is real and severely limiting the State’s stewardship of the water resources we all depend on. New Mexico water resources governance has few dedicated legislative champions.
• Agencies lack capacity but deserve support. They must become more publicly communicative,  and internally productive, which would be aided by modernization of information technology.
• New Mexico’s thinking regarding the value of the irreplaceable water resources services provided to us by our rivers and aquifers is outdated and harmful. Natures’ water distribution services to our points of diversion are irreplaceable.
• Living creatures and our communities suffer when aquifers become so diminished they no longer can convey and supply water, and when unmanaged overuse of interconnected groundwater dries our rivers.
• High water use industries that the State is recruiting cannot be supplied with sufficient water anytime soon unless it is taken from irrigation.
• Economic development proponents who declare New Mexico is open for business seem uninterested in water resources sustainability or understanding and living within water resources constraints. They are here for the short-term.

Durable Information — What Will Still Matter Two Years From Now

At year’s end, our Operating Committee asked a simple question: what from our work will still matter when time moves on? What will still be valid, even if our elected leaders are not paying attention? Many of our monthly workshops, held at 6:30 pm every 3^rd Thursday except December, have featured information from officials and experts with lasting value. The workshop video recordings provide information and document issues that will shape New Mexico’s water management decisions long after this year ends. All recordings are available here.

Workshop Recordings  with Content that Will Remain Relevant

Subject	Date	Speaker(s)
Aquifer Mapping and Data Initiative Act	Oct 2024	Stacy Timmons, Rachel Hobbs, Laila Sturgis
What the Aridification of New Mexico Means	Sept 2024	David Gutzler, David DuBois
The Carrots and Sticks for Achieving Interstate Compact Compliance	July 2024	Nat Chakeres, Tanya Trujillo
Carrots and Sticks for Achieving Rio Grande Compact Compliance, Part II	May 2025	Nat Chakeres
Groundwater as Essential Infrastructure	June 2025	Maurice Hall
Project Jupiter: Corporate AI Demands Threaten Community Health	Nov 2025	Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena, Rep. Angelica Rubio
Rural Perspectives on Water	Mar 2025	Bill Conner, Andrew Hautzinger, Blanca Amador Surgeon
Strategic Water Supply (Oil produced water & brackish water development)	Feb 2025	Mariel Nanasi, Melissa Troutman, Norm Gaume
New Mexico’s Water Resources, Part 1 Conventional	May 2024	Bruce Thomson
New Mexico’s Water Resources,Part 2 Unconventional	Aug 2024	Bruce Thomson

Gratitude

We are grateful to our readers, speakers, webmaster, volunteers, and financial contributors that make our work possible.  Thank you. We want to recognize those who engaged with us even though it may have been uncomfortable to learn the facts.

Awareness is not enough — but it is where responsibility begins.