The NM Water Advocates in New Mexico are an active group focused on water conservation, policy, and advocacy. They work towards ensuring a sustainable water future for the region through various initiatives, legislative advocacy, and public education.
A recent comment on one of our articles posed a great question: What actually happens if the Rio Grande Compact is violated? Here’s a brief answer from NM Water Advocates board member Bob Wesley. Keep the questions and comments coming, and we’ll share them when we can!
Q: As a relatively ignorant citizen, I find a great deal of useful information and excellent research at this site. IMO, however, I would appreciate more specifics concerning the consequences of violating the compact debit limit of 200 K acre-feet and subsequent Supreme Court litigation. I have found one example: “cutting off all non-essential uses for a period of time to make compact deliveries.” But even with this example, I do not understand what that would entail. For instance, for citizens of Santa Fe or Albuquerque, what are the non-essential uses that would be forbidden? All watering of outside plants? Car washing? For farmers, what would be non-essential uses? For businesses? For well owners?
A: Fundamentally, no one can credibly predict the outcome of a lawsuit in the Middle Rio Grande (Los Alamos Highway to Elephant Butte). However, we have two smaller examples which we could use to make guesses.
(1) “The 1980’s Pecos River decree included a requirement to deliver sufficient Compact-directed water downstream each and every year, regardless of weather conditions. That caused the state to buy and retire a significant quantity of expensive farmers’ irrigation water rights. To ensure New Mexico meets that delivery requirement, the state also drilled multiple new wells in order to pump its limited groundwater into the river. The immediate decree cost was a $14 million penalty and has since grown to over $100 million to maintain compliance.
(2) “In the Lower Rio Grande (Elephant Butte to Texas state line), just conducting recently completed 13-year litigation has cost New Mexico taxpayers well over $100 million dollars. It’s too soon to know the cost of implementing the resulting decree. However, to avoid federal micomanagement of New Mexico’s water, the severe limitation on aggregate groundwater pumping 5-7% will force New Mexicans to apportion the impacts among user groups such as Elephant Butte Irrigation District (traditional farmers), the pecan industry, and the city of Las Cruces. Each group, in turn, will have to decide how to apportion its share of the pain among its water users. For irrigators, the likely costs will appear as limits on crop acreage. For urbanites, it could mean the appropriate utilities precluding certain types of water use (probably insufficient), rationing customers’ water, and scaled increases in water pricing.
Again, the bottom line is that the Middle Rio Grande’s water use, driven by courts and water masters in Washington, D.C., will almost surely be worse than management properly conducted from Santa Fe and/or locally.
– Bob Wesley
Bob Wessely has worked with and led the Water Assembly, now the New Mexico Water Advocates, for over twenty-five years. 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 to problems important to NM and its communities, especially water.
New Mexico is progressing steadily toward water bankruptcy, a condition scientists define as a persistent post-crisis state in which water withdrawals have exceeded renewable supplies for so long that critical water resources are depleted and a return to former conditions is irreversible, even at prohibitive cost.[1] New Mexico is experiencing major decreases in surface water supplies needed to meet present and future requirements of our people and economy. New Mexicans have reacted by increasingly pumping groundwater, accelerating depletion of this dwindling resource. Along the Rio Grande and other rivers, unsustainable groundwater pumping induces recharge from the river that diverts streamflow underground, depriving downstream water rights holders of their water.
Diminishing flows in the Rio Grande Isleta reach April 9, 2026. Photo by GeoSystems Analysis published by the Bureau of Reclamation.
New Mexico Is Spending Its Water Into Bankruptcy
Unfortunately, our population appears to be generally unaware this is occurring. Regrettably, our governor, the majority of our legislators, and almost all candidates for these offices in the upcoming elections doing little to help our population learn about the true water supply emergencies we face. State water agencies are understaffed and slow. They lack the executive direction and tools, such as water metering and modern data systems, that are required for workable water governance. Their leaders take direction from a Governor who prioritizes speculative new water schemes while neglecting the stewardship and managed conservation necessary for lawful distribution of shrinking water supplies.
After all, telling the plain truth New Mexico is in a water overuse and scarcity emergency would clash with the Governor’s and the economic development community’s priority of recruiting data centers and other high water use industry.
This clash resembles that found in other southwestern states, except for Texas. Last November, 70 percent of Texas voters said yes to commit $20 billion, a first and major step to help ensure their state’s population and industries have a reliable water supply.[2]
The Texas Legislature and Voters Choose a Better Path
As reported in the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Winter 2026 quarterly magazine, Solutions, the Texas voters passed Proposition 4, creating the largest water supply investment in Texas’ history, all funded by its existing sales tax.[3] This is a significant first step to fund the $150 billion estimate budget needed for Texas to address its coming and ongoing water supply requirements.
Our claim that “New Mexico is a better place to live than Texas” needs to be backed up with actions, because water makes our lives here possible. Without water, there is nothing.
Proposition 4 initially targets building new water supply systems and helping it patch aging water supply pipes that are now estimated to leak out 30 percent of Texas’ treated drinking water supply. It also targets developing and advancing innovative and cost-effective projects for wastewater reuse, agricultural water conservation, groundwater protection, wetlands restoration, and land conservation. Like New Mexico, the Texas projects also face challenges that include the lack of legal constraints on groundwater pumping and historical water right allocations.
Seeing what the citizens of Texas have accomplished — voting 70 percent in favor of a $20 billion first step toward water security — it is well past time to do something similar in New Mexico. Our claim that “New Mexico is a better place to live than Texas” needs to be backed up with actions, because water makes our lives here possible. Without water, there is nothing. Our overuse is badly damaging New Mexico children’s future.
New Mexicans do not have the option Texas voters exercised. In Texas, a two-thirds vote of their legislature placed Proposition 4 on the ballot — and 70% of Texas voters delivered. New Mexico’s legislature has not. Our governor, our legislature, and our water agencies hold powers that citizens cannot exercise for themselves, powers that are being sorely neglected. New Mexico Water Advocates urges our state’s leaders to act with the resolve Texas demonstrated. We urge every reader to demand it. As EDF says, “It’s not just about money…. It’s about finally recognizing that water is our most precious resource, and it is time to start acting like it.”
Middle Rio Grande Depletions Are Pushing New Mexico Toward a Compact Violation
May 15, 2026
Written Public Comments to the ISC for its May 21 meeting.
Dear Chairman Sanchez, Vice-Chair Timmons, Secretary Anderson, Commission Members, and Director Riseley-White,
New Mexico’s Top Priority Water Resources Management Problem
Rio Grande Compact – Middle Rio Grande compliance ccmpliance metric history and trend
The facts are not in dispute. ISC Director Hannah Riseley-White and State Engineer General Counsel Nat Chakeres presented them plainly as invited speakers at the Water Advocates’ March 19, 2026, workshop. New Mexico carries an accrued compact debit of -132,000 acre-feet. The average annual debit is -19,800 acre-feet per year. The accrued debit limit is -200,000 acre-feet. New Mexico will violate that limit in three years if the trend continues or after one bad year.
New Mexico still has the ability to prevent a compact violation — but only through strong, proactive water resources management, and only if that management begins now. New Mexicans are far better off reordering their own affairs than drifting into a compact violation with the certainty that Texas will have its say at U.S. Supreme Court water bankruptcy proceedings.
The Middle Rio Grande is home to about half of the State’s economy and population and has the highest regional diversity. The State’s two water resources management agencies must protect the water supply that the compact provides for the economy and residents while also protecting the Middle Rio Grande and the State from the risks of Supreme Court litigation for using too much of the Lower Rio Grande’s water for too long.
The Rio Grande Compact is a perfect barrier protecting the Middle Rio Grande from the water demands of the Lower Rio Grande. A New Mexico compact violation opens the door.
The Interstate Stream Commission, A State Water-Policy-Making Body, Should Publicly Consider New Mexico’s Top Water Resources Management Problem
We are grateful that Director Riseley-White and OSE General Counsel Nat Chakeres spoke frankly about this problem at our March 19 workshop. We now urge you as a State Commission with purview over this emergency to take up the problem formally.
The Interstate Stream Commission is a State water resources planning and management policy-making body. It holds statutory authority and responsibility for compact compliance performance monitoring and is graded on Rio Grande Compact Compliance accrued debit status by a Legislative Finance Committee performance measure. That performance measure scale should now be deep in the red. The ISC also has a physical role and substantial funding to reduce Middle Rio Grande conveyance losses that annually worsen New Mexico’s compact deliveries.
This Commission Should Be Briefed, Deliberate, and Take Action.
We request that deliberations consider public comment before choosing or endorsing the State’s approach to prevent the dangerously close compact violation.
The State is quite late in addressing this problem. Because OSE and ISC are late, ISC Commissioners should consider whether resources should be marshalled for a more active compliance program — especially given that Director Riseley-White and State Engineer General Counsel Chakeres announced in March that staff would proceed slowly, through voluntary negotiations, with no metering order forthcoming until late in the year.
Several ISC Commissioners have openly expressed a preference for priority administration, yet the Commission has never been briefed on whether or how it could apply here, what the alternatives are, or what the consequences of each path might be.
We are convinced that water users will not consider the necessary sacrifices they must make Rto prevent a compact violation unless they are motivated by a potentially worse outcome in the absence of their participation, such as cutting off all non-essential uses for a period of time to make compact deliveries.
The Active Water Resources Management program provides a NM Supreme Court-approved legal framework. The Commission must take actions now to protect the Middle Rio Grande water supply in accordance with its statutory mission and broad powers “to protect and to do any and all other things necessary to protect, conserve and develop the waters and stream systems of this state.” Section 72-14-3 NMSA 1978.
Requested ISC Actions
New Mexico Water Advocates calls on the Interstate Stream Commission to take the following steps without further delay:
First, schedule a formal public briefing at the next Commission meeting on the state of compact compliance — the debt, the trend, the trajectory to violation, and the consequences of failure.
Second, deliberate and take a position on the management alternatives available to prevent a violation, including the regulatory authorities the State Engineer holds and has not yet exercised.
Third, direct staff to report publicly and on a regular schedule on progress — or the lack of it.
Fourth, become transparent about this problem in the name of advancing public education and public understanding of the issues, choices, and consequences and the quantity of depletions that must be stopped or prevented to maintain compliance.
The compact violation now in view would bring severe legal and economic consequences to New Mexico — consequences New Mexicans would live with for decades, administered by a federal court that does not forgive debt. This Commission has the authority, the responsibility, and the obligation to the public to address that threat openly. This problem must have a solution framework. ISC must lead its development.
The moment demands it.
Sincerely,
/s/
New Mexico Water Advocates
The New Mexico Water Advocates submitted this public comment to the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission on May 15, 2026. The ISC requires written public comment 72 hours in advance of its meetings but does not read comments into the record, post them publicly, or take oral public comment. It is the only state agency in New Mexico known to operate this way. We are publishing this comment here so that our 1,700-plus members, subscribers, and the interested public have access to it.
The State Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan Omits Water Supply! That’s Unacceptable, It Must Be Fixed, and Here’s Why.
New Mexico is spending federal and state dollars to finish a Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan — due for publication in February 2027 — that manages to largely miss the point. The state is drying up. Not temporarily. Not cyclically. Permanently. And the plan that is supposed to prepare New Mexico for its climate future, to guide New Mexico’s adaptation, treats that fact as a footnote.
A Plan in Name Only
The June 2024 draft plan is being finished by the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department this year. The draft is not without merit. It acknowledges extreme heat, wildfire risk, and flooding. It uses acceptable language about equity and vulnerable communities. What it conspicuously, inexcusably fails to do is face the central reality of climate change in New Mexico. We are consuming far more water than our rivers and aquifers can sustain, and that gap is growing wider every year. The word “adaptation” appears in the plan’s title. The concept is almost entirely absent from its water chapter, which focuses community water infrastructure needs and ignores our shrinking water supplies.
Important Numbers and Facts Ignored
View downstream from the Otowi Bridge on the highway to Los Alamos
The Rio Grande at Otowi Bridge averaged slightly more than a million acre-feet per year from 1992 to 2008. From 2009 to 2025, the average annual volume was 796,000, a 20% loss. The river provided less than 500,000 acre-feet in 2025. Four of the last seventeen years produced more than one million acre-feet, compared to nine of the seventeen years before that. Everybody downstream depends on this water.
Clovis and Portales are out of water. Irrigators across the state who pump huge amounts of non-renewable groundwater to grow forage don’t know how much is left. The Lower Rio Grande Settlement will severely curtail groundwater pumping so the Texas share of Rio Grande flows will reach the state line. The river flow downstream from Caballo Dam this year and last isn’t enough to irrigate the 40,000 acres of pecans New Mexico farmers grow there. Because the Settlement is not in effect yet, the pecan farmers will continue to pump in 2026, adding to the big hole in the groundwater that the Settlement requires the State partially refill by cutting pumping.
This is not drought. Droughts end. New Mexico is undergoing aridification — a permanent, worsening shift in the hydrologic baseline driven by climate heating. The CARP uses the word “drought” throughout, as though winter snowpack will dependably return and rivers will gush again. A problem misnamed is a problem misframed.
The plan acknowledges research by New Mexico’s experts brought together by NM Tech. The experts volunteered their time because the State couldn’t pay them to write their excellent, prize-winning report! Those experts’ scientific evidence supports their conclusion that the state will lose 25% of its groundwater recharge and streamflow by 2070. But the plain truth is that we have lost half the historical amounts that flowed into Cochiti Reservoir as renewable water supply for all New Mexicans living along the Rio Grande plus the Texas share.
The San Juan-Chama Project is failing, producing only 39% of its “firm yield” in 2025. This year will be worse. The column chart below tracks San Juan-Chama water stored in Heron Reservoir at the end of every year since it began filling in 1978. The direction is unmistakable. Rio Grande headwaters snowpack for the 2025-2026 winter was the lowest since measurements began. It melted out before May. Historically, Rio Chama and Rio Grande peak spring flows were around Memorial Day.
The Middle Rio Grande is approaching a compact violation with severe legal and economic consequences. The Lower Rio Grande is in water bankruptcy, as are many regions of the state that depend on groundwater but have already exhausted most of it. That crisis does not appear in the CARP with anything approaching appropriate urgency.
Active Water Resource Management authority has not been applied to the Rio Grande — the river that motivated it — even though the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the State Engineer’s rules in 2012. The 2019 Water Data Act directing agencies are not getting their data online and available to all as that law requires. The 2023 Water Security Planning Act is in its fourth year of agency preparations to start the regional water planning program, with no funds for the regional councils that are yet to be formed to do the work. Water planning requires compiled data and computer simulation models. The data are not compiled; the models are not updated and ready.
Water agencies have many competent, hard working staff but don’t have the capacity or the modern information tools they need. The failure is not the staff’s. The Governor ignores the gap between supply and demand and touts “new water” as the answer. Legislative appropriators deny funding to implement the very laws they and their colleagues passed unanimously. Is the Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan allowed to honestly address water scarcity when the Governor and her Economic Development Department are actively recruiting new high water use industries to locate here?
The State Engineer is appointed by the Governor. She is New Mexico’s top water official with broad powers to govern New Mexico’s water. Hers is the authoritative public voice on New Mexico water, but she has not found the courage or demonstrated the leadership and public clarity the moment demands. The Interstate Stream Commission, a policy making body appointed by the Governor, has never once taken up the Middle Rio Grande compact compliance emergency in a public meeting.
This is malign neglect.
The Governor’s False Solutions
When New Mexico Water Advocates raised these failures directly with EMNRD staff, we were told the department relies on the Office of the State Engineer and Interstate Stream Commission for water policy. The staff response was sympathetic but constrained — these problems, they acknowledged, are beyond their control. True, but woefully insufficient.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham leaves office in January 2027. The CARP is scheduled to be published the following month. The CARP reflects her administration’s bias against tackling the combination of shrinking water supplies and our ruinous overuse of them. The Governor’s sole priority for water supply has been “new water” — reclaimed brackish groundwater and oilfield wastewater — sources that cannot close the gap we face even if the oil and gas companies’ rhetoric were true.
The Plain Truth
Meanwhile, the truth about unsustainable water use and increasing water scarcity goes unanswered by this administration. An adaptation plan that ignores our water supplies will not make New Mexico resilient.
Without water there is nothing. Adaptation to water scarcity is not optional. It is the precondition for everything else.
New Mexico deserves better — and barely enough time remains to demand it.
Articles authored by the New Mexico Water Advocates Operating Committee state the organization’s position.
Last month’s New Mexico Water Advocates workshop drew strong interest and attendance when Gretel Follingstad, PhD, and Maurice Hall, PhD, of the Environmental Defense Fund delivered a clear-eyed, compelling look at the New Mexico 360 Groundwater Report — and the urgency behind it. If you missed it, the video recording and presentation slides are available here.
The bottom line: groundwater supplies more than three-quarters of New Mexico’s drinking water, yet aquifers across the state are being depleted faster than they recharge — and another dry winter makes that reality harder to ignore.
The conversation continues in March. The New Mexico Groundwater Alliance is hosting two free webinars featuring additional report co-authors.
Thursday, March 5 | 12:30 PM MTNM Groundwater Data, Science & Administration Tools Featuring Adrian Oglesby, JD (Utton Transboundary Resources Center, UNM) and Stacy Timmons (NM Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources), moderated by Gretel Follingstad, PhD. 👉 Register here
Monday, March 23 | 5:00 PM MTNM Case Studies of Groundwater Management Featuring Ladona Clayton (Ogallala Land & Water Conservancy), Dr. Phil King (King Engineering & Associates), Ramón Lucero (RCAC), and Aron Balok (Pecos Valley Artesian Conservancy District), moderated by Gretel Follingstad, PhD. 👉 Register here
February 18, 2025. Despite worsening scarcity, compact obligations, illegal water overuse, and the requirement to implement binding settlements, the Senate Finance Committee reduced funding for the Office of the State Engineer and Interstate Stream Commission — the only agencies with authority to manage the state’s water.
State Water Institutions Left Underfunded as Crisis Deepens
The Senate Finance Committee amended next fiscal year’s state budget in a manner that fails to provide the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) and Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) with the resources needed to confront New Mexico’s escalating water crisis. These agencies are the State’s primary institutions for managing water rights, ensuring interstate compact compliance, implementing settlements, protecting river systems, and planning future supply — functions no other entity has legal authority to perform.
Budget Decisions Disregard New Mexico’s Inability to Manage Its Water
The House-approved committee substitute budget already fell far short of what OSE/ISC identified as necessary to address mounting water governance failures, including compact compliance risks, groundwater depletion, and settlement obligations. The agencies requested approximately $132.78 million in special appropriations and program expansions, while the House-passed committee substitute provided about $73.05 million. The Senate Finance Committee authorized seven additional staff but without the $150,000 requested for office space and removed an additional $4.55 million from the House total. The cuts reject the State’s need to carry out essential statutory duties — enforcing water rights, reducing unlawful depletions, implementing the Lower Rio Grande Settlement, replacing the mission-critical water rights database software, and planning for worsening scarcity. The Senate also cut the aquifer mapping program appropriation from the $22.5 million to $10 million.
Committee Chair George Muñoz publicly acknowledged that key budget decisions were shaped through committee members’ rolling discussions outside public hearings and were changed at the last minute. The resulting proposal — including the unexpected removal of a 1% pay increase for teachers and state employees — surprised legislators and highlighted concerns about a back rooms process that also produced major funding decisions affecting the State’s ability to manage its water crisis.
To be frank, it’s our opinion that Sen. Muñoz’s arrogant disregard of New Mexico’s water crises in creating “his” budget is worse than mere fiscal malpractice. Fiscal malpractice means failing to meet State obligations now at the cost of enormous risk and exorbitant future costs. Senator Muñoz is doing more than mismanaging a budget—he is actively undermining the water security of every community in this state.
Evidence of the Senate Finance Committee’s arbitrary decision-making is revealed in the answers to Senator Soules’ (D-Las Cruces) questions of Chairman Muñoz. See the February 16 recording of the Senate Floor debate. The recording can be found here. Senator Soules’ questions begin at 12:26:25. Other Senators also objected to the process and the outcome.
The Outcome For Water
The table linked here provides the Water Advocates’ detailed analysis of the Office of the State Engineer and Interstate Stream Commission’s funding requests and the Legislature’s revisions, comparing the agencies’ original line-item requests with the Executive Budget, the House-approved committee substitute, and subsequent Senate changes.
Without sufficient funding and institutional capacity, OSE and ISC cannot enforce water rights at the scale required, implement interstate and tribal water settlements, reduce depletions, modernize critical data systems, or conduct the long-term planning needed to adapt to declining supplies. These responsibilities cannot be shifted to local governments or private actors; they rest solely with the State.
The funding shortfalls represent a failure to support the institutions responsible for protecting New Mexico’s water future at a time of intensifying drought, climate heating, and chronic overuse of rivers and aquifers. New Mexico cannot manage 21st-century water realities with 20th-century institutional processes, information technology, and thinking.
The funding shortfalls represent a failure to support the institutions responsible for protecting New Mexico’s water future at a time of intensifying drought, climate heating, and chronic overuse of rivers and aquifers. New Mexico cannot manage 21st-century water realities with 20th-century institutional processes, information technology, and thinking.
The 2026 Legislature has once again failed to strengthen the State’s water management system while there is still time, allowing underfunding to compound risks and invite Texas and the U.S. Supreme Court to determine how New Mexico manages the Middle Rio Grande.
The Lower Rio Grande settlement imposes onerous requirements, firm deadlines, and new Texas state-line delivery violation penalties promptly payable in actual water deliveries.
Statewide groundwater overuse — including along the Rio Grande — must be reduced, or New Mexico will suffer permanent and irreversible damage.
Corrections: edited Feb. 19 at 10:40 am to conform to this table included in today’s Interstate Stream Commission staff report that Director Riseley-White presented to the Commission this morning. She said the State Engineer did get seven new positions to administer water in accordance with several Indian Water Rights Settlements and in the Middle Rio Grande to prevent a Rio Grande Compact violation. The ISC Staff Report is online and can be found clicking here and drilling down three layers.
Feb 20, 2026. Added the italicized last sentence of the second paragraph. The Senate Finance Committee also cut that appropriation to less than half the amount approved by the house.
The Senate Must Act—Now—to Prevent a Deepening Water Crisis
New Mexico’s water future now rests with the Senate Finance Committee.
HB2, as sent from the House, funds less than half of the State Engineer’s urgently needed requests to carry out existing statutory duties. These are not new programs. They are the core responsibilities the Legislature has already assigned to the Office of the State Engineer and the Interstate Stream Commission—responsibilities tied directly to interstate obligations, Indian water-rights settlements, and protection of the public welfare. The Senate is now the last line of defense against compounding legal, financial, and operational risk.
New Mexico is legally bound to comply with the Rio Grande Compact, implement federally approved Indian water-rights settlements, enforce existing water rights, and carry out laws the Legislature has already enacted. Underfunding does not make those obligations disappear. It postpones action, raises exposure to litigation, and dramatically increases long-term costs.
The Senate Finance Committee must confront this reality directly.
Where HB2 Falls Critically Short
Rio Grande Compact Compliance The State Engineer requested $50 million to implement the Lower Rio Grande settlement, reduce ongoing Middle and Lower Rio Grande depletions, and ensure water reaches Elephant Butte Reservoir and the new El Paso compact gage. HB2 provides less than half that amount. Partial funding delays corrective action and sharply increases the risk of Compact violation—now projected within two to three years in the Middle Rio Grande.
Indian Water-Rights Settlements The State’s cost share unlocks several billion dollars in federal settlement funding and implements agreed-upon projects that benefit both Tribal and non-Tribal water users. HB2 provides only $10 million of the $35 million request, despite this being an ongoing, binding obligation.
Water Security Planning and Modernization The Legislature unanimously enacted the Water Security Planning Act in 2023. HB2 cuts the funding needed to implement that law and denies FY27 funding to continue replacement of a fragile, 30-year-old water-rights database that is at risk of failure.
River Conveyance and Core Staffing HB2 eliminates funding for extraordinary Middle Rio Grande channel improvements—even though 2025 demonstrated that preventable conveyance losses directly undermine Compact deliveries. It also zeroes out critical field and settlement staff needed for enforcement, wet-water administration, and compliance—functions no other entity can perform.
The Cost of Delay Is Not Abstract
Failure to act now threatens communities, agriculture, Tribal settlements, interstate relations, and New Mexico’s economy. Deferring action guarantees higher costs later—financially, legally, and operationally.
Call to Action
The Senate Finance Committee must provide full funding for the State Engineer’s requested water resources management special appropriations and expansions that the House left out of HB2.
If you care about New Mexico’s future, contact Committee members today and demand the Senate fully fund these core State water management responsibilities. Only the State has the authority and resources to comply with the law by carrying them out. Committee members are listed here.
On August 29, 2025, the Lower Rio Grande litigation parties and “friends of the court” filed a proposed settlement with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Special Master in the interstate water lawsuit brought by Texas against New Mexico in 2013. The United States later joined the litigation to assert its claims against New Mexico. In 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice objected to a proposed settlement between the three Compact States, stating that New Mexico must be specifically required to timely meet its commitments. The Supreme Court rejected it.
The “canalized” Lower Rio Grande in the Mesilla Valley. Photo credit: El Paso Water
A revised settlement was filed in August 2025. It consists of a proposed Consent Decree and four implementing agreements between the litigants and the irrigation districts in both states. Following a Special Master hearing in Philadelphia, state water officials informed legislative committees in November that they expect the Special Master to recommend approval to the Supreme Court. If approved, the Court will issue a final decree making the agreements binding and enforceable. The Supreme Court practice is to create a continuing Special Master position to perform decree accounting and report or oversee compliance.
The Consent Decree and four implementing agreements exceed 130 pages and are highly technical. This New Mexico Water Advocates summary explains, in straightforward terms, what the settlement requires, what it authorizes, and how the parties are to carry it out. It identifies who must act, under what conditions, by when, and with what consequences. The settlement would significantly change water management downstream of Elephant Butte Dam.
New Mexico Water Advocates invites readers provide comments regarding errors or important material missing from this summary.
When the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) asked for public comment on its proposed rules for regional water security planning, the responses were nearly unanimous in criticism.
From acequia associations to wildlife agencies, counties to citizens, the message is clear: the rules fail to meet the Water Security Planning Act’s promise of regional, science-based, locally led, and participatory planning. Critics call the draft “unreadable,” overly legalistic, and designed to centralize power in staff hands rather than empower local councils.
The breadth of opposition from technical experts, grassroots leaders, farmers, and scientists alike underscores the fundamental problem: both the rules and the process to adopt them lack legitimacy.
Everyone Feels Excluded
Farmers fear losing water; environmentalists fear losing rivers. Scientists want rigor. Local officials want fairness. The Proposed Rules require improvement.
When every constituency feels unheard, the failure lies not in disagreement but in design.
A Deeply Flawed Rulemaking Process
Subject to available funding, the commission shall establish and conduct a regional water security program pursuant to the provisions of the Water Security Planning Act. NMSA 1978 Section 72-14A-4 (A) (2023)
Seventy-three public comments were submitted by the ISC’s September 27 deadline. The ISC’s rulemaking procedure drew as much criticism as the rule itself. Observers expect the upcoming October 15–17 hearing to expose not only weak content but deep procedural flaws that fail to provide opportunities for participation the State Rules Act requires.
No Analytical Rationale
Filed July 17, 2025, the proposed rule came with no analytical rationale or evidentiary record explaining why any provision was chosen. The law requires a “rational connection between facts and choices,” but neither the factual basis nor the evaluated alternatives are visible.
The record consists only of the rule text, legal process documents, public comments, and prefiled staff testimony. The exhibits accompanying the testimony are historical; many of them would have justified the 2023 Act but are irrelevant to the Proposed Rule. They are limited to old handbooks, reports, and more recent open house presentations and summaries. None are directly cited in the staff testimony. Without linkage, they serve as background, not evidence.
No alternatives considered by staff were analyzed; no technical reasoning was disclosed. The public was asked to comment blindly. Commissioners are asked to decide without knowing the staff’s reasons for constraining key provisions of the Proposed Rule.
Staff’s testimony, filed after public comments closed, does not answer the basic question: Why are the rules written as they are? Instead, the testimony recounts history and asserts sufficiency, offering no transparent foundation.
Now the Commission Must Lead
Staff and contractors designed and controlled every stage of drafting, revision, and internal review, withholding their reasoning. The resulting Proposed Rule does not provide the clarity or rigor needed to ensure planning is meaningful and state funds are not wasted. The Proposed Rule is riddled with passive-voice constructions, misplaced modifiers, negative language, and ambiguity in direct violation of specific drafting standards for Rules.
When Commissioners and the public lack access to underlying rationale for the vague and ambiguously drafted Proposed Rule, meaningful oversight becomes impossible. The staff-centric process embedded in the staff’s Proposed Rules to implement the Act contradicts the Act’s vision of transparent, Commission-adopted rules to require meaningful decentralized regional water security planning without excessive staff gatekeeping.
Non-Evidentiary Hearing
The hearing itself will be non-evidentiary, disallowing sworn testimony and excluding the presentation of expert witness testimony or other evidence by interested parties. Questions will be permitted only from Commissioners, and the public will have no opportunity to challenge, clarify, or rebut statements made during the proceeding.
Worthwhile water planning must integrate hydrology, climatology, law, economics, and the social sciences. Establishing the technical and social planning program the law requires is a technical matter. Integrity requires the Commission’s understanding of transparent reasoning and its consideration of evidence commission members find credible.
A non-technical hearing format is inadequate for the complex, interdisciplinary water security planning program Rules. The non-technical hearing record will be a transcript of opinions, not evidence, leaving the Commission’s decisions vulnerable to challenge.
Compressed Schedule
Staff have filed thousands of pages into the record. Only the State Engineer and ISC staff may present evidence and testimony at the hearing. The public comment period closed September 27. Staff expert testimony was filed on October 1. The hearing starts two weeks later.
This hearing structure and the compressed schedule violate due process requirements expressed in “case law.” The State Rules Act specifically requires adherence to “case law.”
Selective and Unexplained Revisions
Staff testimony responds selectively to a few comments and revises portions of the draft accordingly; it fails to identify why certain comments were singled out for a staff response and doesn’t cite criteria or evidence. Such opacity erodes trust and risks rendering the rule arbitrary under judicial review.
Some of the 73 public comments advocated for specific water governance outcomes. Most comments were broadly critical. Some provided detailed critiques, with many suggestions. A handful said the proposal was okay.
Scientists Want Science
Beyond process, agencies fault the rule’s substance. The New Mexico Department of Wildlife urged that councils be required, not merely encouraged, to use best available science regarding species and habitats.
Rio Grande Return and others noted that wetlands are omitted entirely.
A major coalition, New Mexico Wild, Audubon Southwest, Amigos Bravos, and Western Resource Advocates, warned that “may consider” clauses turn mandates into options. They called for a defined procedure to consider the needs of future generations, as the law explicitly requires, and for measurable accountability. Others called for the mandatory ‘considerations’ to be made substantive and reviewable, not simply be repeated from the Act without implementable substance.
Local Voices Seek Fairness
Community water systems raised parallel concerns. The Eldorado Area Water & Sanitation District questioned how priorities could be fairly considered and ranked across huge regions. Others said funding and prioritization criteria remain unclear. “Readiness” the only ranking criteria is undefined
Projects labeled ‘ready’ would be prioritized to outrank long-term programs and policies to balance water uses with water supplies, advance the public welfare, or protect water for future generations. Those efforts can’t be “ready” when proposed. They will require more time and resources, but they align with the law’s purpose.
Traditional Communities Demand Protection
Acequia leaders said the draft ignores centuries-old governance. The New Mexico Acequia Association warned that traditional uses remain unprotected and representation uncertain. The Cattle Growers’ Association voiced the same worry: that urban priorities would override rural needs without safeguards. Irrigators and Pueblos asserted their senior rights.
How Not to Implement Transformative Law
Unless the ISC reopens the record, files its missing rationale, and allows a fair process founded on rationale and evidence, this proceeding will stand as a case study in how not to implement transformative legislation.
Aquifers are vanishing. Climate stress is growing. Decentralized water planning is the path forward.
New Mexico faces a stark and accelerating water crisis. In many parts of the state, aquifers are being depleted to support uses that cannot be sustained, especially agriculture dependent on non-recharging groundwater. This extraction is not just borrowing from the future:it is stealing from it.As climate change reduces snowpack, accelerates evaporation, and intensifies drought, the state’s water supply is shrinking.
Though aware of the situation, our political leaders seem unwilling or unable to confront its urgency, while the consequences of delay grow more severe by the year.
An “all hands” commitment to water resources planning (or more simply “water planning”) is how we propose to confront this reality.
Rio Grande at Albuquerque, no pools in sight, late July 2025. Photo credit: Wesley Noe
Water planning is about solving problems. Good planning helps us understand our water supply and uses, face hard choices, anticipate future conditions, and make informed decisions to secure a livable and just future for New Mexicans.
The choices we make in the next few years will determine whether many communities across New Mexico have water security, or whether too many will face escalating crises. The time for planning is not someday. It is now.
Purpose of Water Resources Planning
Water resources planning is a forward-looking, problem-solving process to ensure the sustainable, equitable, and efficient use and management of water in the face of increasing and permanent scarcity. Its purpose is to identify and address water challenges, especially those driven by climate change, aquifer depletion, legal obligations, and shifting demands. It does this by thoughtfully and carefully integrating science, law, governance, and public values.
Water planning in New Mexico must take place in conformity with state and federal laws, while also confronting a basic truth: Many essential water needs and uses are not protected by law. Drinking water and sanitation for all, reliable supplies for communities, schools and hospitals, our beloved rivers and the sacred needs that they supply—these uses have no claim to water rights or have rights with low priority under law. Yet these needs are not going away. and raise the fundamental question: how to share shortages fairly. Thus, planning involves negotiating the rules for who gets what, when and how.
Drained aquifers cannot be brought back. Adaptive action is the only way to avoid catastrophic and irreversible loss. Urgency in understanding local situations now through planning will reduce the number of future New Mexico communities that will run out of water. Decentralization is essential. The problems are local and regional. Planning must be too.
Key Goals
1. Balance Supply and Demand
Assess available water under changing climate conditions and align this reality with current and future demands for people, farms, ecosystems, and economies. This requires a reliable understanding of the planning region’s water supplies and water uses.
2. Balance Competing Needs
Navigate the intersecting and often conflicting demands of:
• Urban and rural communities
• Agriculture
• Environmental protection
• Economic development
In New Mexico, this includes confronting the consequences of continued agricultural uses and proposed economic development new uses that mine groundwater at the expense of communities and future generations who will be left without. Planning must grapple with these intergenerational trade-offs and define transitions toward sustainable use.
Water measurements and hydrogeologic science developed and applied with scientific integrity must define a framework upon which the social methods of water planning. Water planning overlays the law, legal uncertainty, economics, and values on the facts. A beginning common ground between diverse interested parties can be built on understanding facts and the legal situation in a process where the parties learn about the problems that planning must address and get to know each other.
Irrespective of the diversity of belief systems held by members of a community, it is essential that planning be built on a framework of agreed upon hydrological, hydrogeological, and meteorological data. (You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts!) Face to face communication among members of a planning group is essential in building the trust needed to get beyond “head in the sand” refusal to listen or to entertain opposing points of view. That trust is key to building a workable plan.
The work of planning is social and probabilistic, not deterministic. A major social component is breaking through the head-in-the-sand attitude that is apparent in so many localbusiness leaders and public officials. It may bedifficult to bring recalcitrant parties to the table, but easier as they come to understand therisks they and their interests face by simply being members of the community. Their participation is needed to help find solutions.
3. Promote Long-Term Sustainability
Acknowledge the limits of natural recharge. Many New Mexico aquifers are essentially non-recharging, and climate change is reducing recharge further due to accelerating evapotranspiration. Planning must reflect these realities and support strategies to limit further depletion, extend critical supplies, and protect water security for future generations. Planning should support monitoring systems and adaptive governance frameworks to respond to depletion trends and new data.
4. Manage Risks and Uncertainty
Prepare for droughts, floods, compliance with legal constraints like the Rio Grande Compact, and intensifying climate volatility. Regional water budgets and enforceable demand management agreements are tools that might be produced through regional water planning to address uncertainty.
5. Protect Ecosystems and Water Quality
Safeguard river health, aquifer integrity, and clean water supplies through integrated, science-based planning. Planning should address nature-based solutions—such as increased natural infiltration of stormwater runoff, watershed restoration, ecological flow targets, and aquifer recharge zones—as climate adaptation strategies.
6. Guide Investment
Make sound decisions and recommendations for infrastructure spending. Prioritize projects, programs, and policies for implementation. Well-prepared regional plans will unlock access to state and federal infrastructure funding. Technical assistance should be provided to ensure all regions, especially underserved and rural areas, are competitive and ready.
7. Ensure Equity and Public Benefit
Plan to meet the needs of all people, not just those with the most power or resources. Respect and integrate tribal, cultural, and historical water rights in all decisions. This includes supporting capacity-building for Tribal and rural communities to ensure their voices, rights, and knowledge systems are equitably integrated into planning and governance processes.
8. Inform Policy and Governance
Provide a science-based framework to guide laws, public funding, institutional design, and transparent decision-making. Planning must support governance that is lawful and enforceable, while also addressing essential and sacred water requirements—like those for communities, hospitals, schools, ecosystems—that are often subordinate under existing water rights but are indispensable to a functioning society.
Without a clear planning framework and enforceable rules, these essential needs will remain vulnerable. Some will go unmet. The window for proactive, science-informed policy is rapidly closing. We must choose between managed transition and unmanaged collapse. Sound regional planning based on truth, urgency, and local leadership is the foundation for New Mexico’s water future.
ISC Commission members have the power to unlock access to funding so that across NM regions and regional leaders can begin now, instead of dates far into the 2030s, to begin to fulfill their lawful decentralized responsibilities.
ISC staff presentation to the Commission on June 18, 2025. Water Advocates photo
Committee Chair George Muñoz 
