Water 2120 Requires Fundamental Reassessment
The United Nations has a name for what is happening to Albuquerque’s water supply. In January 2026, the UN’s think tank on water published a report concluding that the world has entered an era of global water bankruptcy. New Mexico is not exempt. The term was formally defined this year to be more precise and descriptive than the generalized term “water crisis.” Water bankruptcy is a state in which a human-water system has spent beyond its hydrological means for so long that it can no longer satisfy the claims upon it.
New Mexico Water Advocates submitted a White Paper to the Authority Board at its April 22 meeting requesting six actions to prevent Albuquerque’s pending water bankruptcy.
The first step in preventing water bankruptcy and adapting accordingly is to recognize the problem; that is, face the facts. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Albuquerque discovered and faced the relevant facts of the aquifer underneath it that was its sole water supply source. Now, reduced river flows of the Rio Grande and the three headwater streams since the turn of the century demonstrate the 1990s assumptions, which were also the Water 2120 assumptions, are invalid, overtaken by climate change. Albuquerque must again face the facts and adapt. As the 1997 Albuquerque Water Resources Management Strategy explicitly called for, Albuquerque should also help its neighbors.
Water 2120 Doesn’t Work with Climate Heating and Aridification
In 2016, the Authority adopted Water 2120, a 100-year water plan, concluding a major effort by Water Authority staff and several consultants. Water 2120 authors assumed that future water supplies would resemble the past — a condition water planners call stationarity. That assumption was visibly failing by the time Water 2120 was approved. It is now visible as dry riverbed sand and cracked mud in Valencia County. The river will dry at Albuquerque in May until drenching monsoon rains arrive, if they do.
Water 2120’s water supply strategy depends on the federal San Juan-Chama Project, which delivers water from the Colorado River basin through Heron Reservoir to augment municipal and irrigation water supplies in the Middle Rio Grande. The Authority has perpetual contract rights to half of the Project’s annual yield.
Direct drinking water use of the Authority’s share has two requirements. Both are failing simultaneously. Heron Reservoir ended 2025 at 7% of capacity, a record low. The absence of winter snowpack resulted in this year’s inflows to the reservoir also setting a record low. Runoff is over. Native Rio Grande flows are so low that the Water Authority’s river water treatment plant shut down on April 24 due to lack of sufficient streamflow to allow its diversions to continue. Since 2020, the drinking water plant has been unable to treat water for a sufficient number of days per year to meet its annual drinking water production targets.
The Rio Grande Compact Clock Is Running
New Mexico currently carries a cumulative Rio Grande Compact debt of 132,000 acre-feet, accruing at roughly 20,000 acre-feet per year. A plain-terms Compact violation occurs at 200,000 acre-feet. At the current rate, that is three years away.
A Middle Rio Grande Compact violation will cause another Texas lawsuit heard by the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court again will become New Mexico’s water bankruptcy judge and Texas will have its full say.
The Rio Grande Compact obligates New Mexico to deliver water to Elephant Butte Reservoir for the Lower Rio Grande’s water users. Every Middle Rio Grande diversion from the river, every pumping well, and increased evapotranspiration from the river and riparian corridor draws against a common Middle Rio Grande legally available water supply that is smaller than the total demand. In retrospect, this trend has been visible for many years.
The Water Authority contributes a relatively small fraction of the Middle Valley’s total depletions. However, a compact violation is extremely risky and will bring big problems for the Water Authority. Water 2120 doesn’t recognize the overarching compact limits on total depletions or the effects of Water Authority planning decisions and operations on compact compliance.
The Water Authority Board Must Act
The Water Authority’s executive director has made recent public representations that the Authority can serve new high-water-use industrial customers. The Authority plans to consume more of its treated wastewater for non-potable irrigation that will increase its net depletions of the river. These public representations and plans to consume more and more of the Authority’s return flows for irrigation are contradicted by the Authority’s 2026 Operating Plan that recognizes the severe constraints of this year’s hydrology and the requirement for unsustainable groundwater pumping. Staff reported to the Board that fewer wells are currently in operating condition and that two old high production wells had recently collapsed and were ruined.
The Authority also faces a growing gap between revenue and expenses, a substantial backlog of deferred facility rehabilitation, and over $140 million in unexpended rehabilitation appropriations while costly failures divert resources from planned work. The Authority’s financial advisors are recommending new fixed monthly customer fees and increased debt financing at a time when debt service is already the Authority’s largest annual expense. The Authority’s revenue model depends on water and sewer commodity sales — creating a structural conflict between the conservation the situation demands and the revenue the Authority needs to pay its bills.
Water 2120’s foundational assumptions have failed. The Board has the White Paper. The NM Water Advocates look forward to the Authority’s response.
What We Are Asking — And What You Can Do
The New Mexico Water Advocates’ White Paper requests six actions by the Water Authority board:
- a formal, transparent reassessment of Water 2120;
- an inclusive stakeholder process to revise planning assumptions;
- a suspension of the Authority’s representations about serving new high-water-use industrial customers until future Authority water supply adequacy is publicly assessed;
- a reassessment of the current Drought Stage designations and the responses each stage requires;
- a conservation focus on high water users and non-functional turf; and
- a policy of cooperation and mutual sacrifice to prevent a Compact violation.
The New Mexico Water Advocates are asking elected and appointed leaders at every level to engage honestly with what the data show.
We are asking you to make your voice heard — with the Authority Board, with your elected representatives, and in your community. The Middle Rio Grande’s water future will be decided in the next few years. The choice to adapt to prevent water bankruptcy is still available. The time to act is now.
May 7, 2026 @ 11:38 am
The white paper is outstanding and—to anyone who cares about water in Albuquerque—deeply unsettling. It echoes my own concerns about the folly of reliance on San Juan – Chama water during a time of aridification and, as a consequence, a return to aquifer over-exploitation. As I wrote in an Albuquerque Journal op-ed piece way back in 1999, in arid environments like ours the hydrological concept of aquifer safe yield has little meaning. Our safe yield is nearly zero. If we go back to groundwater for most of our supply as we realize how fickle the San Juan – Chama water supply will be—and as it has been during the past couple of years—we’ll be mining an unsustainable resource. I’m not sure people understand that if we exceed the compaction threshold—which we haven’t really refined updated since the 1990s—the aquifer damage will be irrecoverable and significant. Even if water levels recover, the aquifer will have decreased its ability to store and transmit water.