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Bob Wessely

About Bob Wessely

Bob Wessely has worked with and led the Water Assembly, now Water Advocates, for twenty-five years. Partnering with the Middle Rio Grande Council of Governments, the Assembly coordinated the planning process that resulted in the 2004 MRG Regional Water Plan. In Bob’s previous 30-year career, he co-founded and served as Technical Director of SciSo, Inc., an Albuquerque software system engineering and management consulting firm supporting diverse industries nationwide. Although Bob holds a PhD in Theoretical, Solid-State Physics, at heart he is a systems engineer who enjoys finding solutions for problems important to NM and its communities, especially water.

Posts by Bob Wessely:

Dry Rio Grande

Rio Grande Compact: We’re Still in a Heap of Trouble

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The inconvenient truth is New Mexico’s economic well-being depends critically upon water.  We are already in one of the driest periods in the last millennium.  The New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources projects about 25% less water availability within the next 50 years due to climate change.  With increased pumping because of drought, groundwater levels across most of the State are dropping, in some cases to the point of running out. 

These statewide issues foretell slow train wrecks and do need attention.  However, there is one water issue in the Middle Rio Grande that is urgent, potentially a fast train wreck.  This article describes that urgent issue. 

What’s happening?

The 2023 Rio Grande Compact data shows that New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande (MRG) region (Los Alamos Highway to Elephant Butte Reservoir) has again consumed more than its legally allotted share of the river’s flow.  We have been regularly failing to deliver sufficient water to Elephant Butte Reservoir as required to meet our obligations to downstream water users (see cumulative balance graph). 

For more than a decade, the trend has been downward.  This past year the shortfall was 29,400 acre-feet (about 9.6 billion gallons).  Our cumulative debt is now 121,500 acre-feet.  At 200,000 acre-feet debt, we violate this three-state treaty (CO, NM, TX). 

So why worry?

For years, water users downstream south of Elephant Butte Reservoir have not received their legally entitled share of the river’s flow.  Both those southern New Mexicans and Texans downstream are rightfully unhappy.

Projecting forward with the 2023 shortfall, the MRG would reach the Compact violation at the end of 2026. 

New Mexico is still litigating toward a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the twelve-year-old lawsuit concerning deliveries southward from Elephant Butte Reservoir to Texas.  This lawsuit has already cost New Mexico taxpayers statewide about 80 million dollars, and counting.         

Unless ongoing excess water uses are curtailed, the MRG’s average annual under-deliveries suggest that New Mexico will clearly violate the Compact. This would surely lead to an additional lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court.  This time, the lawsuit and likely adverse ruling would add costs far beyond what we’ve endured thus far during the Lower Rio Grande lawsuit.

Even worse, any potential adverse judgement could involve serious consequences to New Mexico and MRG water users:  a large monetary penalty, requirements to provide years of over-deliveries thereby depriving the MRG users of water, and/or federal court control over our use of water.  It’s a hammer hanging over our heads.

We need to act now!

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.  Without a doubt we must reduce our over-use of MRG water to reverse the cumulative downward trend.  This will take prompt hard work, and shared sacrifices.

It is in the vital interests of we, the MRG water users – big agricultural and water utility agencies, smaller agencies, community organizations, individuals – to work together immediately.  Rather than let the State Engineer direct a potentially lopsided solution, or worse, have him do nothing, we should act –come together and collaboratively determine an agreement on how each of us will manage our uses to achieve our Compact obligations.  Usage reductions should be sufficient, equitable, and designed to minimize the overall impacts.  Of course, we must establish management strategies that will implement the agreement throughout the future years.  We need to act now!


Bob Wessely has worked with and led the Water Assembly, now Water Advocates, for twenty-five years. Partnering with the Middle Rio Grande Council of Governments, the Assembly coordinated the planning process that resulted in the 2004 MRG Regional Water Plan.

In Bob’s previous 30-year career, he co-founded and served as Technical Director of SciSo, Inc., an Albuquerque software system engineering and management consulting firm supporting diverse industries nationwide. Although Bob holds a PhD in Theoretical, Solid-State Physics, at heart he is a systems engineer who enjoys finding solutions for problems important to NM and its communities, especially water.

Drought

Commentary: Surviving a drought – Middle Rio Grande Water Advocates

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State residents need to think of ways to conserve our water supply

Following is an Op-Ed that was published in the Albuquerque Tribune on May 29, 2007, before climate warming became as publicly visible and intense as it is today.  Promptly (sarcasm intended), a mere sixteen years later, the 2023 New Mexico Legislature unanimously passed the landmark Water Security Planning Act.  Now, we’re eagerly watching and waiting to see if the 2024 Legislature will see fit to fund the Act’s implementation. This article is even more relevant than it was in 2007, as the aridification of the West has only increased. Time is of the essence, New Mexicans and specifically the 2024 Legislature must act now in order to secure a sustainable and resilient water future for New Mexico. !Agua es Vida: Do your Part!

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Drought – nature’s reminder that water does not grow on trees.

Drought is the time when some form of government advice or regulation prescribes that we collectively choose to reduce our uses of water, usually because of some form of government advice or regulation. It is the time when we receive less rainfall than we would like to have. In New Mexico, we get such a reminder from nature virtually every year.

As a result, we are setting ourselves up for a day of water reckoning.

In Sandoval, Bernalillo and Valencia Counties, we have been using over 20 percent more water than we receive overall, deficit-spending our resource, resulting in the gradual draining of our aquifers. We must stop burying our collective heads in the sand, or all we will have left is sand.

Consider: 23, 28, 35, 39, 47, 34, 29. A familiar series of numbers? Probably not. These are the annual inches of precipitation during droughts in Chicago, Cincinnati, Memphis, Miami, New Orleans, New York and Portland. The averages are substantially higher.

These cities are some of the places from which three quarters of New Mexico’s new residents move. The other quarter of the newcomers is born here. It takes some effort to recognize the implications of Albuquerque’s precipitation levels – which average just over 8 inches and peak around 12 inches.

The folks who grow up here usually recognize that we are in a perpetual drought. Generally, that knowledge is reflected in their concern for water and their resultant behaviors for using water. The only question is whether this year’s drought-descriptor should be noticeable (above average rain) or serious (near average rain) or desperate (below average rain).

To set a reference, look at precipitation averages from tree ring studies over the last 2,200 years. It is interesting to note Chaco Canyon was abandoned during below-average rainfall, and the middle Rio Grande region’s 20 percent water-consumption deficit was during the wettest quarter-century in those two millennia.

Because we are not elected officials in Washington, D.C., deficit spending cannot go on forever. We have limited ability to increase our water income at a finite dollar price, which suggests we need to terminate a sizable chunk of our total uses. That’s a tough order.

When we think about it carefully, it’s even tougher than it first looks. We have to realize over a third of our total water goes to natural, open-water evaporation and riparian plant life within the three-county region. We have minimal ability to reduce these natural uses. The only credible reduction targets are agricultural, domestic and industrial uses. To meet the goal, those target uses would have drop from 195,000 to 140,000 acre feet per year – with everyone using 30 percent less.

And the toughness of our water-budget balancing order doesn’t stop there. The region’s population is growing by 1 percent to 2 percent each year – more people wanting more water. Our behaviors, deeper pumping and releasing of effluents are degrading the quality of some of our water sources. The global-warming scientists tell us to anticipate even less rainfall this century than the average over the past 2,000 years.

The techies at the Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln define four kinds of droughts: meteorological (rainfall shortage); hydrological (water supply shortage); agricultural (soil-moisture shortage); and socioeconomic (resultant goods or services shortage). Their beginnings tend to follow one another and occur in cycles.

Usually, it is local governments that declare what actions we are politically willing to take in response to a drought – sometimes depending on the drought’s intensity or duration. While our political will has increased somewhat over the last few years of meteorological drought and improved scientific information, it has a long way to go.

While we have increased the price of water delivery a little, there is still a negligible charge for the water itself. When we perceive meteorological drought, we sometimes limit car washing for a few weeks or so or limit lawn sprinkling to selected days. We even replace a few percent of our toilets with low-flow devices. And we sometimes shorten the irrigation season by a few weeks.

For your homework, please do a little arithmetic, and see how far you think those use-reductions will go toward mitigating our 30 percent annual shortfall.

Drought: It’s nature’s reminder that water does not grow on trees. Ask your elected officials what they are doing, each and every day, to help us all work together and survive our perpetual state of drought.

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Email the Water Advocates today to say you would like to participate!


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People at round tables in discussion

Why Should You Plan for Water?

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The Issue – Who gets water when there isn’t enough? At a simplified level, the current New Mexico “Priority Administration” regulations, if enforced when there isn’t enough water, would provide much of the water to irrigators first, leaving very thirsty cities and towns. And with desperately thirsty cities and towns, the New Mexico economy would wither, taking down those irrigators as well as virtually everyone else.

New Mexico law provides a workaround.  It allows for a community of neighbors on a common water source to create an agreement on how to “Alternatively Administer” water. If done well, such agreements could equitably balance the impact of water shortfalls and minimize the pain to the overall community.

An Opportunity –The 2023 New Mexico Legislature recognized the risks, and unanimously passed the Water Security Planning Act (WSPA, a.k.a. 72-14A-NMSA). While some encouragement would be helpful, the 2024 Legislature is poised to provide funding to vigorously implement the unanimous 2023 Act. 

WSPA provides a formal guide for regions of the state and their included communities to come together and develop programs and policies (agreements) to share water equitably, consistent with physical reality.

The Act concurrently provides a mechanism for the regions and their communities to identify current and future problems, to identify needed infrastructure projects, evaluate and prioritize such solutions, and then, with the state’s help, seek funding to implement the projects.

The Goal – Together, the programs, policies and projects will form a plan to deal with regional water in the future. To work effectively and to provide equitable results, the planning process must involve proper consideration of input from all stakeholders – at the regional level to meet region-wide constraints, and at the community level for addressing localized problems. 

A Prime Case – Let’s consider the Middle Rio Grande Region (from the Los Alamos Highway to Elephant Butte Reservoir). That area encompasses a big fraction of the state’s population and its economy. The Middle Rio Grande has an urgent problem – risk of expensive Compact violation.  Accordingly, we want to start the planning effort promptly, in parallel with the state’s rule-making process. 

We all draw from the same water source: the Rio Grande and the aquifer that lies under the river, which in turn are fed only by precipitation (rain or snow). That precipitation is highly variable. 

Over the past decade or so, the Region has been regularly using more water than it is entitled to use.  If unabated, the rapidly accruing debit (see figure on following page) will almost surely lead to lawsuits, astronomical taxpayer costs, and potentially, federal Supreme Court control over New Mexico water. And with a warming climate, more of the incoming surface water will evaporate leaving even less for use, which will drive groundwater users to increase their impact on the already-damaged aquifers. 

We (virtually all of us) have become spoiled, accustomed to having and using plenty of water. You might remember that the last two decades of the 20th century were the wettest in 2000 years, but the past two decades have been among the driest. And significant further climate-based reduction is projected. 

What’s Coming? – With grant funding, state concurrence, and nationally recognized coordinators, the Middle Rio Grande Water Advocates are convening a collaborative, broad, multi-stakeholder process to establish the well-balanced regional water resilience planning Entity that WSPA calls for. That Entity will conduct a multi-year, publicly driven and scientifically based water planning process leading to a consensus plan for program and policy agreements along with evaluated and prioritized infrastructure projects ready for legislative and other implementation funding.

For the MRG to have a viable water and economic future under changed climates, we can’t continue in a siloed race to the bottom. All interests must be represented, collaboratively participate, and be duly respectfully heard. The process must keep water at the forefront and develop a consensus on the best solutions going forward. 

And this means you.  Agua es vida.  Do your part!  

Email the Water Advocates today to say you would like to participate!


Bob Wessely has worked with and led the Water Assembly, now Water Advocates, for twenty-five years. Partnering with the Middle Rio Grande Council of Governments, the Assembly coordinated the planning process that resulted in the 2004 MRG Regional Water Plan.

In Bob’s previous 30-year career, he co-founded and served as Technical Director of SciSo, Inc., an Albuquerque software system engineering and management consulting firm supporting diverse industries nationwide. Although Bob holds a PhD in Theoretical, Solid-State Physics, at heart he is a systems engineer who enjoys finding solutions for problems important to NM and its communities, especially water.

IconForWaterRightsAndWaterWrongs

Water Rights … and Water Wrongs

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While the rules about them are extremely complicated, “water rights” are simply your permission slip from the State to use water, if you can find it (often a big “if”).  Water rights are often called “paper water.”  Separate and distinct from paper water are collections of dihydrogen oxide molecules (H2O).  Such collections are affectionately known as “wet water.”  All too often, people conflate paper water and wet water. The results can be seriously misleading or worse. 

Wet water can be neither created nor destroyed (with very minor exceptions).  But it can change form, from solid (ice melting) to liquid to gas (evaporating), and back.  Most water users deal with the liquid form.  It comes to us as precipitation, where the gaseous form of water condenses into liquid or solid form as rain or snow.  And then it migrates:  coalesces into streams/rivers, seeps into the ground, and/or evaporates back into gas.  We obtain wet water for use by diverting it from streams/rivers (“surface water”) or by pumping it out of the ground where seepage has accumulated either recently or over millennia (“groundwater”).  In some places, pressure drives groundwater naturally to the surface as springs, where it becomes surface water.

Paper water (permission slips) has four attributes.  They are (1) a maximum quantity of water;  (2) a location or point of diversion from the stream/river/well;  (3) a purpose and place of use; and  (4) a priority date when water was first put to beneficial use in that place.  When there is insufficient wet water in the stream/river for all of the water rights holders, New Mexico law allocates the limited water among permission holders.  It says that the oldest priority date user (“most senior”) gets all of his/her water; the next oldest can draw up to his/her limit from what’s left over, and so on down the priority date chain until the entire stream/river is used up, regardless of their location along the stream/river.  In that “strict priority administration” regime, the recent date water permission holders (“junior users”) may get no water at all.  New Mexico law also allows an exception for permission holders on a stream/river system to enter into shortage-sharing agreements with a different plan of allocation (“alternative administration”).  New Mexico law also allows permission slips to be bought, sold, leased, and/or moved, subject to State approval, except for domestic wells.

Water permission procedures were established long ago when almost all water use was surface water.  In the mid-20th century, use of groundwater started becoming substantial.  The state created a new form of paper water called “permits.”  These were permissions to pump limited quantities of groundwater from a specific well for a particular purpose.  Recognizing that substantial groundwater pumping would place a drain on the river stream systems, the state required groundwater permittees to purchase offsetting surface water rights, presumably maintaining the overall quantity of demand on water in the stream/river system at pre-groundwater historical levels.  There are no similar constraints to preserve available groundwater.  Anticipating minimal groundwater impacts, New Mexico law also provides an exception where domestic and livestock wells routinely are permitted without offsetting water rights.  There are now 160,000 or more domestic wells, according to the Office of the State Engineer.  

Paper and wet water have different availabilities.  Between permits and water rights, New Mexico has developed far more permissions for use than there is – or ever was – wet water. New Mexico has no shortage of paper water (water rights or permits).  However, wet water is another story.  Surface wet water flows are highly variable, seasonally, annually, and across decades.  For example, tree ring studies have shown that the last two decades of the 20th century were the wettest in 2000 years.  The first two decades of the 21st century are among the driest.  Climate studies project that New Mexico is facing another 25% reduction in surface water flows over the next 50 years (due to increased evaporation from higher temperatures).  Groundwater studies (and dry wells) have shown that in many places within New Mexico, groundwater supplies accreted over thousands of years are dwindling toward extinction.  Now and in the future, there are and will be serious water shortages across New Mexico.

Action is needed.  Among other considerations, the state’s economic well-being depends upon a reliable wet water supply for individuals and businesses.  Paper water cannot quench these thirsts.  Strict priority administration cannot meet these dependencies either.  For example, the cities have mostly junior water rights, but also the most New Mexicans.  We must collaboratively develop shortage-sharing agreements that will equitably serve as alternative administration regimes for those times of significantly reduced supply of wet water lest our water and economic security suffer. 

Opportunity presents itself.  The 2023 Water Security Planning Act provides a medium for regional and community water planning.  It encourages individuals and stakeholders to collaboratively design and prioritize actions to equitably adapt to much less water, thereby optimizing the communities’, the regions’, and the State’s future economic well-being within the water availability.

Bob Wessely has worked with and led the Water Assembly, now Water Advocates, for twenty-five years. Partnering with the Middle Rio Grande Council of Governments, the Assembly coordinated the planning process that resulted in the 2004 MRG Regional Water Plan.

In Bob’s previous 30-year career, he co-founded and served as Technical Director of SciSo, Inc., an Albuquerque software system engineering and management consulting firm supporting diverse industries nationwide. Although Bob holds a PhD in Theoretical, Solid-State Physics, at heart he is a systems engineer who enjoys finding solutions for problems important to NM and its communities, especially water.