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Norm Gaume

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About Norm Gaume

Norm Gaume is a retired water engineer, former water resources manager for the city of Albuquerque, and former director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. He has been a prominent figure in water management and advocacy in New Mexico, notably serving as a vocal critic of the Gila Diversion Project since 2013. Gaume is also the president of the Middle Rio Grande Water Advocates, an organization focused on promoting sustainable water management practices in the region. His work has emphasized the importance of careful water resource management and the need for community-driven solutions to address New Mexico's water challenges.

Posts by Norm Gaume:

MRG Water Delivery Cumulative debits&credits

From the President’s Desk: Rio Grande Compact Jeopardy

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New Mexico’s water resource management agencies are telling the Legislature that New Mexico faces Middle Rio Grande compact jeopardy and lacks capacity to prevent that jeopardy from becoming a disaster. What jeopardy, you might be thinking? This is how the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) describes it (emphasis in the original):

If hydrology does not improve, and without further action, New Mexico could violate the Rio Grande Compact – an agreement between New Mexico and our neighboring states related to how the waters of the river are shared. A compact violation could trigger curtailment and/or costly litigation that may result in severe and unpredictable shocks to the economy and water supply for agricultural and municipal users in the middle and lower Rio Grande.   […]

If depletion reductions are managed in a proactive manner, New Mexicans can retain local control over water management and have certainty about water rights management into the future.

Maintaining New Mexico’s compliance with the Rio Grande Compact requires additional resources now.

What is the Rio Grande Compact and what does it require of the Middle Rio Grande?

The Rio Grande Compact, like other interstate river water allocation compacts in the West, is state law in all the states subject to the compact. It is also federal law.  Once signed by the Governors of the states and the President of the United States, following passage by the state legislatures and Congress, an interstate stream compact is binding. It can be changed only by agreement. Interstate water disputes involving compacts are evaluated and enforced by the United States Supreme Court. There is no appeal.

Turmoil erupted along the Rio Grande when Coloradans diverted all the flow they could from the Rio Grande in the 1890s. The river at El Paso was dry. Three decades of interstate disputes were settled by a 1929 federal moratorium on all Rio Grande water development. After a remarkable and intensive federal hydrology investigation, the Rio Grande Compact was negotiated and signed at Bishop’s Lodge in Santa Fe in 1938.

The Rio Grande Compact makes three allocations for water use in New Mexico.

The Upper Rio Grande may continue using as much water as it was, and no more, as an implicit condition of the compact. No formal compact accounting procedure to enforce this provision exists. New Mexico is not in violation because Upper Rio Grande irrigation has declined substantially.

Lower and Middle Rio Grande allocations

New Mexico must deliver water through the Middle Rio Grande for use in the Lower Rio Grande. The compact allocations require a minimum of 57% of the water flowing under the Otowi highway bridge to Los Alamos be delivered for Lower Rio Grande uses. New Mexico’s annual allocation is the other 43%, capped at a maximum of 405,000 acre-feet per year.

For accounting purposes, the Middle Rio Grande inflow is adjusted for net storage change over the year in New Mexico’s reservoirs constructed after the 1929 moratorium.

The graphic below illustrates these allocations. The Middle Rio Grande portion of the annual Otowi inflow volume is the turquoise sliver. The Lower Rio Grande is entitled to 100% of the annual volume that exceeds 1,200,000 acre-feet in one year, the orange wedge.  The compact was designed to fill Elephant Butte Reservoir in flood years.

In addition to Otowi gage annual inflow allocation, the Middle Rio Grande is entitled to deplete the annual inflow volume from tributaries entering the Middle Rio Grande plus all San Juan-Chama Project imported water released to San Juan-Chama Project contractors..

The New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) oversees the Rio Grande Compact situation for New Mexico and supports the New Mexico Compact Commission, who is always the State Engineer.

Internally within New Mexico, the State Engineer has the legal authority to enforce compact water delivery requirements, but has never done so on one of the state’s major rivers.

The ISC works with representatives of the Bureau of Reclamation, Colorado, and Texas to prepare the compact accounting annually for the Rio Grande Compact Commission’s approval. Water deliveries from the Middle Rio Grande for use in the Lower Rio Grande are measured as the change in storage in Elephant Butte Reservoir plus the volume released from Elephant Butte Reservoir during the year. The compact caps the Middle Rio Grande’s allowable cumulative water debt at 200,000 acre-feet

Rio Grande Compact Litigation in the Lower Rio Grande

New Mexicans residing in the Lower Rio Grande are entitled by the compact to deplete 57% of the water released from Elephant Butte Dam but are using more through heavy agricultural and municipal groundwater pumping adjacent to the river.  Texas sued New Mexico for a Rio Grande Compact violation in 2012 claiming New Mexico groundwater pumping was taking New Mexico water.  The United States intervened on the Texas side and presented its own claims.

Actions by  large New Mexico pecan growers who depended on massive groundwater pumping were the trigger.  Large growers dominated the Elephant Butte Irrigation District Board. The EBID board gave New Mexico’s Rio Grande water to Texas irrigators to offset the effect of their pumping on the river.  The deal between the New Mexico and Texas irrigators included and was implemented by the Bureau of Reclamation. They completely bypassed the State of New Mexico.  The pecan grower purpose was to pump groundwater to irrigate their permanent crop regardless of surface water shortages. In 2011, New Mexico sued Reclamation in Federal District Court over Reclamation’s lack of authority for its actions. Texas reacted, suing New Mexico the next year in the United States Supreme Court.

The author as ISC Director addressed explicit Texas’ Lower Rio Grande SCOTUS litigation threats from 1997 through 2002, with Texans water agency staff literally pounding on the table in Santa Fe. A year or two later, they cancelled an Austin, Texas, meeting before it was supposed to end, after being confronted by the ISC chair and vice-chair with New Mexico’s counterclaims of Texas, as lawyers say, “dirty hands.”

As an aside, Enron-style charm was a component of the Texas effort in the late 1990s. Enron hosted a lavish reception at the gated, art-filled compound of a wealthy Santa Fe resident. New Mexico and Texas legislators and agency staff attended. It was pretty clear one purpose was a Santa Fe summer break for Texans. Yes, that Enron.

A settlement to the current Texas and US v. New Mexico SCOTUS litigation over the Lower Rio Grande continues on after 12 years and over $100 million in New Mexico litigation costs. A settlement agreed by the states and accepted by the prior Special Master but not the Court itself, would  require NM to reduce groundwater pumping by about 18,000 acre-feet per year. The negotiated settlement didn’t financially penalize New Mexico due to the counterclaims New Mexico developed and proved against both Texas and the United States.

The hang-up to the settlement is the Department of Justice. It objected, saying New Mexico can’t be counted on to do what it commits to and that New Mexico needed to give to Texas water that has long been settled as New Mexico’s. The proposed settlement –  agreed between the states but unacceptable to the Department of Justice – adds a new gage at El Paso and a complex new accounting procedure to measure New Mexico’s annual Lower Rio Grande delivery compliance, if the SCOTUS accepts it.

The SCOTUS ordered mediation under a new Special Master, who is a senior, no nonsense federal judge. The second of the current of compelled mediation sessions presided over by the demanding new special master was held in Washington, D.C. February 26-28, 2025. The Special Master set a trial date for June.

SCOTUS litigation, in addition to being extremely costly and risky, is very demanding of the state’s water resources agencies leaders bandwidth.  They  don’t need another dose. But,

The Middle Rio Grande Water Delivery Debt is Alarming and Growing.

New Mexico’s water delivery debt as of the end of 2023 was 121,500 acre-feet. Despite some cooperative efforts between the state and the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District to reduce the debt in 2024, New Mexico’s preliminary accounting indicates the debt grew slightly to about 123,000 acre-feet. These two graphs illustrate the debt trends and the importance of the litigation credit that New Mexico successfully negotiated with Texas in 2022. The Rio Grande Compact Commission agreed that only New Mexico, and not Reclamation, has the authority to dispose of New Mexico water stored in Elephant Butte.

New Mexico can count on a new Texas SCOTUS lawsuit when the cumulative delivery debt exceeds the 200,000 acre-feet per year limit. We already have seen one version of the Texas complaint, filed when Texas attempted to bring Middle Rio Grande water issues into the Lower Rio Grande litigation.

Relevant History That the Middle Rio Grande Policy- and Decision-Makers Should Understand

New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande compact compliance history has a story to tell. The 1938 compact was barely in existence when two consecutive flood years occurred in 1941 and 1942. Huge floods filled Elephant Butte Reservoir, which overflowed. The floods destroyed the channel of the Rio Grande. Aerial photography of the river below the Bosque del Apache in the late 1940s shows only a sea of salt cedar; no river channel is visible.

Texas sued in the early 1950s.  The United States said it was an indispensable party to that lawsuit because of its trust relationship with the Pueblos but refused to participate. Before the lawsuit was dismissed, Reclamation rebuilt the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District and installed the river diversion dams.  It still owns them.. Reclamation designed a narrow channel between levees and channelized the Rio Grande in its current position. The channelization, deep drains, and major water salvage infrastructure worked to substantially increase New Mexico’s deliveries to the Lower Rio Grande. Texas dropped the lawsuit and New Mexico came into compliance, which has lasted over 50 years.

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The 1980s and 1990s were the wettest two decades of the last 1000 years.  Elephant Butte Reservoir spilled in 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1995. Now we are in the driest decades of more than 1000 years and Elephant Butte Reservoir is drained.

The fundamental problems are these. Our water supplies are down. Our water demands are up. We are courting new high water use industry. We have a continuous, dense water-loving and publicly treasured riparian forest between levees on both sides of the river that never existed before. Groundwater pumping has expanded. Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District expanded their irrigated acreage on newly developed farmland, which they still are allowed by the Legislature to do.

Half of all New Mexicans live in the Middle Rio Grande, many from rural New Mexico seeking employment. While water is never far from the thoughts of most rural New Mexicans, many of whom hold it sacred as do the Water Advocates, water is a taken-for-granted commodity for most urban dwellers.

We are not facing this problem. The 2025 Legislator has appropriated nothing – That’s Right – Nothing – to deal with it. The saying, “Poor New Mexico, so far from Heaven, so close to Texas,” attributed to New Mexico Governor Manuel Armijo about 1850, seems to fit the situation confronting us with the current budget. The House of Representatives allocated $48 million for brackish water development but zero for proactive efforts to maintain Middle Rio Grande compact compliance. Now it’s up to the Senate.

Active Water Resources Management is the Solution

Fortunately, there is already a fully authorized legal mechanism to curtail overuse and prevent the pending compact violation. A bill passed by the 2003 Legislature authorized a program called Active Water Resources Management.  The law, Section 72-2-9.1 NMSA 1978, granted new authority to the State Engineer. It says, in part,

The legislature recognizes that the adjudication process is slow, the need for water administration is urgent, compliance with interstate compacts is imperative and the state engineer has authority to administer water allocations in accordance with the water right priorities recorded with or declared or otherwise available to the state engineer. The state engineer shall adopt rules for priority administration to ensure that authority is exercised: (1) so as not to interfere with a future or pending adjudication; (2) so as to create no impairment of water rights, other than what is required to enforce priorities; and (3) so as to create no increased depletions.

The Office of the State Engineer issued General Rules to implement this new authority in 2004.  The New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously upheld the rules in 2012.

The AWRM program was designed for the Rio Grande. It is the law.  AWRM will prioritize water rights to protect senior users, essential domestic uses regardless of priority, require accurate measurements of groundwater pumping, and enforce reductions by junior water rights owners.  Creation of a water bank so that water can be accessed by otherwise curtailed junior users is a requirement.  The water bank will allow otherwise curtailed junior water rights holders to lease water from senior water right owners who in exchange for money will make their water available, reducing conflict and encouraging conservation.  It’s complex but essential.

The Deputy State Engineer and the OSE General Counsel presented an informative workshop describing the “carrots and sticks” of compact compliance in May 2024.  The video recording is available under “Past Events” at nmwateradvocates.org. The General Counsel is scheduled to present again on the Middle Rio Grande Compact situation at the Water Advocates’ May 15, 2025 3rd Thursday evening workshop. Preregistration is required and will be available soon on the Water Advocates website.

The Legislature must fund the State Engineer to apply AWRM to the Middle Rio Grande or all New Mexicans will suffer the costs and Middle Rio Grande will suffer the severe consequences projected by the State Engineer fact sheet: curtailment and/or costly litigation that may result in severe and unpredictable shocks to the economy and water supply for agricultural and municipal users in the middle and lower Rio Grande. 

The Legislature’s choice is simple, but legislators appear unaware they are making that choice.  They must fund proactive compact compliance or fund the consequence of not doing so: another high-stakes, risky round of Texas v. New Mexico SCOTUS litigation.  With the current national political situation,  SCOTUS litigation with Texas seems particularly fraught. The stars seem to be aligned for Texas.

Call to Action

The Senate Finance Committee is the only hope for funding Middle Rio Grande Active Water Resources Management. The State Engineer requested $500,000 for new staff positions to do this work. The Water Advocates are requesting an additional $2 million in non-recurring funds to accelerate this essential work.

The Senate Finance Committee must agree to this funding within the next week or so. Please call your Senator, Senate officers, and the Senate Finance Committee members to ask the Senate to provide the OSE/ISC with the resources they need to protect the Middle Rio Grande. Tell them why they should support this funding.  It’s essential to:

  • Prevent Costly Litigation
  • Maintain Local Control
  • Protect Agricultural & Municipal Water Supplies

The Legislative Toolkit at nmwateradvocates.org will be helpful.  Use the links and sample language there to find your Senator’s contact information and help you structure your communication. Time is short.

Please act now.

Glossary

Acre-Foot – A unit of volume used to measure large-scale water resources. One acre-foot equals the volume of water required to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot (approximately 325,851 gallons).

Active Water Resources Management (AWRM) – A New Mexico program authorized by the Legislature in 2003 (Section 72-2-9.1 NMSA 1978) granting the State Engineer additional authority to manage water use, enforce water rights priorities, and ensure compliance with interstate compacts.

Adjudication – A legal process to determine and confirm the extent and priority of water rights. In New Mexico, adjudications take decades to complete, prompting the Legislature to grant the State Engineer provisional management powers under AWRM.

Bureau of Reclamation – A federal agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior that oversees water resource management, particularly in the western states. In the Rio Grande context, it manages reservoirs, irrigation projects, and other infrastructure.

Cumulative Water Delivery Debit or Credit – A cumulative tally of how much water a region has underdelivered (debit) or overdelivered (credit) annually since compact accounting began in 1940.

Curtailment – A restriction or reduction in water use imposed to prevent overuse and maintain required flows or deliveries under a compact or other legal agreement. If New Mexico violates the Rio Grande Compact, curtailment of water rights may result.

Depletion – Water lost from a system through evaporation, consumption by crops, consumption by riparian vegetation, etc., so that it is no longer available for downstream use. Under the Rio Grande Compact, annual accounting is based on river water supplies and the depletion of the river flows measured downstream over the calendar year.

Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID) – A water management district in southern New Mexico responsible for delivering irrigation water below Elephant Butte Reservoir. It was completed in 1916.

Elephant Butte Reservoir – A large reservoir on the Rio Grande near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Elephant Butte Dam is the first constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation. It holds the Lower Rio Grande’s entire surface water supply.

Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) – A New Mexico state agency charged with ensuring New Mexico’s compliance with interstate water compacts, developing water plans, and protecting the state’s water interests. The author of the blog post formerly served as Director of the ISC.

Lower Rio Grande – Generally refers to the stretch of the Rio Grande below Elephant Butte Reservoir in southern New Mexico, extreme southwest Texas, and Mexico to a point about 100 miles downstream from El Paso. Users in this area rely on the river for agriculture and other water needs.

Middle Rio Grande – The portion of the Rio Grande from the Los Alamos highway bridge to Elephant Butte Dam. This region includes Albuquerque, surrounding municipalities, and agricultural areas within the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD).

Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD) – A political subdivision of the State of New Mexico that manages irrigation, drainage, and flood control in the Middle Rio Grande Valley. Its operations impact water deliveries downstream.

New Mexico Office of the State Engineer (OSE) / State Engineer – The New Mexico state agency tasked with overseeing water rights administration, dam safety, and compliance with interstate compacts. The State Engineer is the chief water official in New Mexico and was granted additional powers under AWRM to enforce priority administration.

Otowi Bridge – A key river-gauging station near Los Alamos, New Mexico, used in Rio Grande Compact accounting to measure the flow of the river and determine delivery obligations for the Middle Rio Grande.

Rio Grande Compact – A 1938 agreement allocating the waters of the Rio Grande among Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. It is ratified by Congress and the involved states and enforced by the U.S. Supreme Court. The compact sets specific delivery requirements for the Middle and Lower Rio Grande, with limits on allowable “water debt.”

San Juan-Chama Project – A federal project that diverts water from the San Juan River Basin (part of the Colorado River system) into the Rio Grande Basin. This imported water is used in the Middle Rio Grande to supplement local municipal and MRGCD irrigation supplies.

SCOTUS – An acronym for the Supreme Court of the United States. SCOTUS has ultimate authority to interpret and enforce interstate compacts. It presides over water-related disputes between states, including those involving the Rio Grande Compact.

 

Finish what's started clip

Legislature: Please Fund NM Water Security!!

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This is a critique of the water-related special appropriations in House Bill 2, the 2025 General Appropriation Act that passed the House on February 24. The appropriations emphasize treating brackish water as a niche water supply rather than seeking broad water security in the face of scarce, shrinking water supplies.

What is Water Security?

The United Nations published a practical definition of water security that is applicable to New Mexico’s situation.

Water Security Laws Implementation: Underfunded and Stalled

New Mexico’s water, cultural, and economic security would be substantially boosted if the State Engineer and Interstate Stream Commission vigorously implemented three 21st Century additions to New Mexico water law.  All three are essential to New Mexico’s adaptation to having much less water.  The Legislature, having passed these important policies and authorities into state water law, must appropriate resources to the Office of the State Engineer and the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission to accelerate their full implementation.  This graphic summarizes the need. Water Can’t Wait!

Badwater Development is the Governor’s & House Priority

As shown in the bar chart below, the largest special appropriation of non-recurring money for one-time projects is $40 million for incentives to public sector developers of brackish water for hi-tech, high water use industries like solar panel manufacturing and chip factories.

This is a poor choice for top priority. Why? Because it can’t be done quickly and safely by the private sector.  The treatment technology exists but  necessary knowledge about brackish water resources does not exist. The little we know about brackish groundwater that could be extracted without impacting potable groundwater is far from sufficient for development.

The Environment Department’s August 2024 feasibility study draft report falsely presented the expensive and damaging failures of Sandoval County-funded attempted development of Rio Puerto confined aquifer brackish water as a success. Two test wells produced pressurized hot, highly corrosive brackish water laden with heavy metals and radioactive particles.  Leaks due to rapid corrosion have escaped containment. The toxic corrosive water is sure to destroy the steel casing in a century or so. The author’s public comments pointed out the truth; that false report was omitted from NMED’s final report.  Yet the report says the Lower and Middle Rio Grande are the best options for brackish water development.

My understanding of the Middle Rio Grande brackish water resources – beyond a careful study of the Sandoval County study’s engineering reports  –  is that poor quality water exists in both deep and shallow aquifers.

For example, the Middle Santa Fe Group aquifer under the Southwest Mesa of Albuquerque – the vast former undeveloped area of the Atrisco Land Grant subject to the Santolina Master Plan – contains water. It’s deep and bad quality. However, wells there are dismal producers or are essentially dry because the Middle Santa Fe Group aquifer sediments are not conducive to groundwater flow into wells.

In the Lower Rio Grande, New Mexico State University Civil Engineering faculty have demonstrated the technology to treat brackish water. Faculty members say that the next step is to complete expensive and time-consuming geophysical studies and test wells to decide where the brackish water can be extracted and the concentrated waste injected for disposal without damage to fresh water or brackish water reserves. This is an essential part of due diligence best performed with state oversight and quality control given the risk and consequences.

Legitimate Water Security Agenda Partially Funded or Not at All

Because of the need to map brackish water aquifers as part of fundamental aquifer research and monitoring, House Bill 2 allocates $19 million for the Bureau of Geology’s Aquifer Mapping Program, a needed downpayment toward accelerating completion of this $175 million, 12-years-to-completion-when-funded project. NMED water and wastewater utility operator workforce development is also an explicit part of the $2.8 million appropriation to NMED for small water systems regionalization to gain economies of scale and share scarce skilled labor.

No other water security investments are adequate to face our severe water resources sustainability challenges. The Water Data Act is not mentioned in any of the House non-recurring appropriations for the OSE/ISC even though the data they collect and own are scattered. , with some in data sets and legacy applications in disarray.  Some data sets are in disarray and very poor quality, such as the locations of wells.

OSE & ISC have a more difficult job than other two Water Data Act Directing Agencies because their data is so necessary for management and planning, yet so decentralized, existing as images, paper, and spreadsheets. Official water use estimates in lieu of measurements are untimely and incomplete. Yet good quality data are prerequisites to good planning.

Two sequential data-related prerequisites for regional water planning are not funded. It’s the ISC’s responsibility by law to provide the data the regions need for their regional water security planning. Neither the OSE/ISC’s basic work to make good water data public assessable nor the ISC’s work to package the datasets and models regional water planning councils uses are funded.  Without funding, the agencies say this work can’t be pursued or in the case of compact compliance, can’t be done as well or as quickly.

Senate Funding Requested

The Water Advocates are requesting the Senate add three appropriations of non-recurring funding totaling $6.9 million to the State Engineer and Interstate Stream Commission for these purposes.

  • $2.4 million for ISC block grants of $250,000 each for nine regional water planning councils to self-organize and prepare a work plan with an application for state funding. The total includes $150,000 for ISC administrative expenses for this Water Security Planning Act grant program.
  • $2.5 million to fully fund the state-information-technology-process-approved real-time water use measurement and reporting application.  Rational water planning is not possible without reliable water use data. The Governor and the House cut $2.5 million of the $3.0 million needed.
  • $2 million to stop Middle Rio Grande’s large chronic water overuse and maintain New Mexico’s compliance with the Rio Grande Compact debt limits. Excess depletions of water in the Middle Rio Grande have deprived water users south of Elephant Butte Dam of 155,000 acre-feet of their rightful supply since 2018, an average of 22,100 acre-feet per year.  NM, by its failure to take this crisis seriously, its passive disregard, is inviting the Supreme Court of the United States to decide the Middle Rio Grande’s water future. That is a particularly bad result of allowing water mismanagement to continue.

The graphic explains what and why.

Information Available for Download

To show how the House budget allocates non-recurring funding to one-time water programs and needs, see this table of the appropriations sorted from largest to smallest and the bar chart above. You can also download the flyer.

Call to Action

Please use the Legislative Toolkit accessed from the Announcements section of our home page to contact your state Senator and members of the Senate Finance Committee.

Tell them advancing New Mexico’s water and economic security needs funding, the $6.9 request to avoid yet another year’s delay in really getting started.

Water Can’t Wait.

Badwater v sweetwater $

The House Budget Tilts to Dirty Water

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House Bill 2, the 2025 General Appropriation Act, favors dirty water clean-up over good water stewardship. It passed the House Appropriations and Finance Committee on Feb. 21 and the full House Floor on Feb. 24. The Senate Finance Committee will amend the bill and add the spending supported funding reserved for the Senate to allocate.

The Water Advocates hoped the House budget would include adequate funding to implement the good water bills the Legislature has passed in recent years, two of them unanimously. But the House Appropriations and Finance Committee put the nonrecurring money that it controls into things other than grants to regions for water security planning, the State Engineer’s water data act compliance, and Middle Rio Grande compact compliance funding for emergency measures to prevent new SCOTUS water litigation with Texas.  House Bill 2 directs state attention and funding in this year of extraordinary revenue away the essential underpinnings of governing our water so that it sustains life here for the long haul.  The color coded table compares HB2’s budget support for dirty water to support for work I judge to be essential beginnings of improved New Mexico water stewardship.

Numbers in the purpose description refer to the appropriation line items in House Bill 2, Section 5, Special Appropriations or Section 7, Information Technology.

The comparison of non-recurring appropriations totaling $48 million for brackish and produced water development and totaling $31 million for management, planning, conservation, and stewardship of New Mexico’s diminishing freshwater shows misguided priorities.

The Water Advocates’ sought large special appropriations as described in House Bill 423 for the State Engineer and Interstate Stream Commission to implement the 2019 Water Data Act, the 2023 Water Security Planning Act, and the 2012 Active Water Resource Management Program in the Middle Rio Grande. The bill died in the House Appropriations and Finance Committee after unanimously passing its first committee.

The Water Advocates’ are now requesting the Senate allocate $6.9 million to cover “shovel-ready” implementation work by New Mexico’s two water resource management and planning agencies.  Some in Senate Leadership think that was a mistake that the House didn’t fund more vigorous implementation of these water laws because of their importance in problem-solving. Now it’s up to the Senate Finance Committee, which has a share to allocate.

 

Screenshot 2025-02-23 at 9.26.47 PM

Serious Inadequacies in ISC’s Sparse Draft of Water Security Planning Rules

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February 24, 2025

via email to: Director Riseley-White for distribution to Commissioners

New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Attention:  Ms. Hannah Riseley-White, Director

RE: Public Comment on ISC Discussion Draft Rules & Guidelines for Regional Water Security Planning

Dear Director Riseley-White and Commissioners,

On behalf of the New Mexico Water Advocates, I formally submit this letter following our online comment form submission and the timely submittal of our detailed markup on February 21, 2025. Our Board of Directors unanimously approved submitting the NM Water Advocates comments and this letter, reflecting the urgent need for the ISC to substantially improve the proposed rules before promulgation.

The ISC should not rush to promulgation without substantial revision.

The NM Water Advocates request that:

✅ The ISC issue a revised draft incorporating substantive changes based on stakeholder feedback before moving forward with promulgation.
✅ The ISC provide a second public review period to allow for further refinement before finalization.

  1. The ISC’s Draft Rules Fail to Use Its Statutory Delegation of Authority to Create a Functional Program

The Water Security Planning Act (Section 72-14A NMSA 1978) delegated clear authority to the ISC to establish and conduct a regional water security program through rulemaking, but the discussion draft rules fail to translate that authority into a structured, functional framework. The statute does not merely call for passive facilitation; it charges the ISC with designing and implementing a comprehensive program that provides clear expectations, structured processes, and enforceable standards for regional planning councils. Instead, the draft provides minimal procedural detail, leaving essential programmatic elements undefined.

Critical Failures in Program Design:

❌ Fails to recognize that regional water planning is voluntary and does not provide inducements for regional participation or clear expectations of the public value the planning process is expected to provide to the region and its communities in exchange for state funding and support.
❌ Lacks guiding principles, objectives, and a procedural framework outlining the full scope of the water security planning program.
❌ Provides no criteria for evaluating regional plans beyond listing projects, creating uncertainty about how plans will be assessed and approved.
❌ Lacks accountability measures to ensure that the regional planning process is functional, meets stated principles and objectives, and results in approved regional plans that are as timely as good process will allow, actionable, measurable, and aligned with long-term water security goals.
❌ Does not establish the relationship and mutual interdependence of regions and the communities within them.

What the Rules Should Include:

✅ A structured process for councils to develop data-driven, science-based regional water security plans.
✅ Defined benchmarks and criteria for plan development and approval, ensuring consistency across regions.
✅ A clear outline of ISC’s administrative role, including how it will support councils, provide technical assistance, approve plans (with ISC’s endorsement for implementation), and assist regions with execution.
✅ A requirement for ongoing program evaluation to assess effectiveness and make necessary adjustments over time.

By failing to provide a cohesive program design, the draft rules leave critical gaps that will create confusion, inconsistencies across regions, and missed opportunities to ensure a coordinated statewide approach to water security. The ISC must take responsibility for fully implementing its delegated authority and issue rules that establish a well-defined, operational regional water security program, not just procedural placeholders.

  1. The Rules Should Clearly Define Their Purpose and Objectives

The Water Security Planning Act (72-17A NMSA) envisions a structured, problem-solving process that enables New Mexico to address water security risks and plan for resilience at the regional level. However, the draft rules take a minimalist approach, simply restating statutory requirements rather than defining a workable, transparent process for regional councils to follow.

Request: The rules should explicitly define the goals of regional water security planning, ensuring a shared understanding among ISC staff, regional councils, and the public.

  1. Regional Planning Cannot Be Limited to a List of Prioritized Projects, Programs, and Policies

Regional water security planning has two primary functions, prioritizing projects for the Legislature’s capital outlay considerations and bringing people together to make decisions and improve community water supply security. Most of the backlog of community capital project needs are for water and wastewater infrastructure that will increase the community’s infrastructure reliability but will save little to no water. Planning should be done objectively and productively in each region to meet region-wide objectives such as aquifer protection, compact compliance, and the safe drinking water for all.

The primary function of regional planning is to develop sustainable water security strategies, not merely to prioritize infrastructure projects. The current rules fail to require data-driven problem definition and do not establish a structured decision-making process for selecting strategies or programs that improve long-term resilience.

Request: The ISC should require that regional water security plans include:

✅ A detailed analysis of the relative priorities, benefits, and costs of community projects, programs, and policies eligible for Legislative capital outlay. This analysis should be based on a regional council’s consensus on prioritizing infrastructure reliability improvement projects that enhance the reliability and operational quality of community water and wastewater systems but little water resource security benefits.

✅ Projects, Programs, and Policies to Increase water security in consideration of the needs of future generations, including:

  • An analysis of current and future water availability using the best available hydrologic data.
  • A clear identification of water security risks and vulnerabilities.
  • Scenario-based planning to assess alternatives before prioritizing solutions.

Without both elements, the regional plans risk being ineffective wishlists rather than actionable roadmaps for both community water supply and regional water resource security.

  1. The Rules Do Not Ensure a Functional Regional Planning Process

The Draft Rules fail to define key procedural elements needed for successful regional planning, including:

  • Decision-making processes within Regional Water Planning Councils.
  • How stakeholder input will be incorporated into plans.
  • Specific criteria for ISC approval of regional plans.

Request: The rules should clearly articulate:

✅ Consensus-building and collaboration requirements to ensure councils function effectively.
✅ Requirements for regional councils to provide meaningful public information and opportunities for public observation and engagement in compliance with state open government laws.
✅ Approval criteria that ensure regional plans align with statewide water security goals.

  1. The Rules Must Require a Data-Driven Approach

The current draft lacks enforceable requirements for councils to seek and use the best available data in assessing regional water security risks. Past planning efforts have failed due to unrealistic assumptions about water availability, leading to plans that were not implementable.

Request: The ISC must require regional plans to be based on:

✅ Hydrologic, legal, economic, and climate data vetted by independent experts.
✅ Transparent methodologies for estimating future water supply and demand.
✅ A screening process to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of proposed strategies or programs of projects and policies.

Without these safeguards, regional plans may be disconnected from hydrologic reality, rendering them ineffective in addressing New Mexico’s water security challenges.

  1. The Planning Process Should Be Designed for Success

Concerns:

❌ The proposed structure of regional councils is unwieldy. In the Middle Rio Grande, for example, the council may have well over 50 members, making consensus and collaboration difficult.

❌ The ISC has inserted itself into local governance decisions by appointing all local government representatives, rather than allowing governing bodies to select their own representatives.
❌ The two-year planning timeline is unrealistic, given the complexity of regional water security challenges.

Request:

✅ Reconsider council size and composition to allow for effective decision-making.
✅ Allow local governing bodies to choose their own representatives.
✅ Ensure the planning timeline allows for adequate data acquisition, stakeholder engagement, and collaborative planning to occur.

Conclusion

We request that the ISC issue a revised draft incorporating substantive changes based on stakeholder feedback before moving forward with promulgation, and that the ISC provide a second public review period to allow for further refinement before finalization.

We stand ready to collaborate with the ISC to refine these rules, ensuring that the Regional Water Security Planning Program fully realizes its potential. Our joint effort will meet the New Mexico Legislature’s need for a reliable process to prioritize water infrastructure and capital investments while addressing the need for enhanced water supply resilience for all New Mexicans.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

/s/

Norm Gaume, President
On behalf of the Board of Directors
New Mexico Water Advocates

NM_Water_Dialogue_098

Guiding Principles for NM Regional Water Security Planning

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Introduction

The NM Legislature intended regional water security planning to be a New Mexico regional and community water resilience problem-solving tool and unanimously passed the 2023 Water Security Planning Act to authorize it and provide for state funding.

For the planning program to be effective, the rules must provide a clear, high-level framework for the Regional Water Security Planning Program, defining objectives, responsibilities, and implementation processes. The rules must describe the relative roles of ISC, regions, and communities in their cooperative endeavor to understand the limits and trends of their water supplies and evaluate alternatives for improving their resilience.

Perhaps most important is that the Rules articulate essential Guiding Principles, such as these:

✅ Proposed Guiding Principles for Effective Regional Water Security Planning

✅ Water planning is to solve water problems; the problems must be named.
✅ Data-driven problem definition must come before intensive planning.
✅ Legal water rights must be balanced with long-term water supply protection.
✅ Water planning must be grounded in independent science and holistic analysis.
✅ Regional planning must be efficient, practical, and produce actionable solutions.
✅ Stakeholder engagement must be designed to ensure meaningful participation.
✅ Planning efforts must be well-funded and include clear implementation pathways.

To create the New Mexico’s regional water security planning program as a powerful tool for solving water challenges, regional water security planning must be structured around the following core principles.

  1. Water Resource Planning Is a Tool for Solving Water Problems

🔹 Water planning should be structured around identifying and solving water problems.

✅ Clearly define the core water problems that regional planning must address—such as water overuse, climate-driven scarcity, aquifer depletion, and long-term sustainability.
✅ Require regional plans to develop, compare, and prioritize alternative solutions, rather than just listing projects.
✅ Emphasize adaptive decision-making that allows regions to revise strategies as water conditions change.

  1. Data-Driven Problem Definition Before Intensive Planning

🔹 Water planning should not begin as an expensive, time-intensive process until the region’s water problems are clearly defined using data.

✅ Require an initial problem-definition phase based on scientific, hydrologic, and economic data before launching full-scale planning efforts.
✅ Ensure that regional planning processes begin with a shared fact base, reducing confusion, inefficiency, and unproductive debates.
✅ Structure planning timelines to allow for early-stage data collection and assessment, so that stakeholders engage meaningfully once problems are well-defined.

  1. Water Planning Must Balance Legal Water Rights with Water Supply Protection

🔹 Regional water security planning must explicitly balance the strong legal protections for the right to use water with the need to protect the water supply itself.

✅ Require explicit water balance evaluations that consider how water availability, climate change, and usage patterns affect long-term supply.
✅ Ensure that regional plans consider and evaluate the public welfare of the region, the needs of future generations of New Mexicans, equitable access to safe water, and the economic and environmental trade-offs of different water management choices.
✅ Enable regions to tailor solutions to their unique hydrologic, economic, and environmental conditions while ensuring that long-term sustainability is a core consideration.
✅ Require that regional plans include climate resilience measures that protect both the physical availability of water resources and users’ rights.

  1. Water Planning Must Be Grounded in Science and Holistic Analysis

🔹 Planning efforts must be based on the best available data while also supporting the development of new scientific and hydrologic information where data gaps exist.

✅ Require standardized scientific methodologies—such as water balance models, scenario planning, and risk assessments—to guide regional water security planning.
✅ Require that regional plans analyze the effects of continuing status quo water management and identify the specific actions needed to secure water for future generations of New Mexicans.
✅ Cumulative impacts of proposed projects should be evaluated holistically, ensuring that regional plans account for interconnected effects across communities and water use sectors.
✅ Ensure that data collection and analysis remain independent from political pressures, protecting the integrity of scientific assessments.
✅ Require that each proposed project, program, or policy is vetted for feasibility and that costs and projected water savings are developed for those that pass initial review, ensuring that scenario analysis is based on realistic options.

  1. Water Planning Must Be Efficient, Practical, and Actionable

🔹 Regional planning should focus on producing clear, actionable solutions, rather than getting lost in bureaucratic complexity.

✅ Ensure that regional councils are structured efficiently, balancing broad representation with practical decision-making capacity.
✅ Ensure that each regional council has qualified leadership and the necessary resources to conduct and manage the water planning process effectively.
✅ Planning timelines must be realistic and structured, preventing unnecessary delays while allowing for thorough problem and solution analyses.

  1. Water Planning Must Engage Stakeholders Meaningfully, Not Just Formally

🔹 Public participation should be structured to ensure that engagement is productive, inclusive, and directly informs decision-making.

✅ Equip regional councils with the resources and strategies needed to engage local communities effectively in the planning process.
✅ Ensure that public input is meaningfully incorporated into planning decisions, with clear mechanisms for responding to concerns and adapting plans based on stakeholder feedback.
✅ Adopt transparent and fair decision-making processes to balance competing water interests while maintaining accountability.

  1. Water Planning Must Be Well-Funded and Supported for Implementation

🔹 The ISC’s rulemaking and implementation approach should be proactive and well-funded, ensuring that planning efforts are not constrained by a lack of resources or political hesitation.

✅ Ensure dedicated funding streams for both planning and implementation, so that well-developed plans do not languish without action.
✅ Require regional councils and the ISC to establish clear pathways for implementation, including funding mechanisms, monitoring requirements, and accountability measures to track progress.
✅ Ensure that statewide objectives lead to solutions that comply with planning law and effectively support both statewide and regional water security needs.

Final Takeaway:

A successful regional water security planning process must go beyond bureaucratic compliance to serve as a problem-solving tool that applies the facts, the law, human creativity and community, and stakeholder input to ensure long-term water security. The NMISC Rules & Guidelines should be revised to explicitly incorporate these principles, ensuring that New Mexico’s approach to water planning is efficient, actionable, and capable of addressing the state’s most pressing water challenges.

Screenshot 2025-02-12 at 11.38.36 AM

Strengthening The Design of Regional Water Security Planning

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📌 Why It Matters

New Mexico’s water security is in crisis. New Mexico’s water security is at a tipping point. Decades of overuse, combined with climate-driven scarcity, are depleting aquifers and threatening the state’s ability to sustain communities, agriculture, and industry. Clovis, Portales, and eastern New Mexico communities and farmers are already experiencing severe impacts from the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer after a century of pumping. Without action, similar collapses will happen elsewhere across the state.

Aquifer depletion is not the only crisis. New Mexico is also overusing its surface water resources, putting additional strain on the Rio Grande and depriving downstream users, including in-state farmers. In the Middle Rio Grande, overuse amounts to approximately 26,000 acre-feet per year, while in the Lower Rio Grande, it reaches 18,000 acre-feet annually. The Rio Grande’s flow near Santa Fe has declined by 25% since 1988 and continues down due to global warming.

Despite these mounting challenges, state leaders are actively pursuing new industries that demand large amounts of water—exacerbating shortages and placing further strain on already overdrawn resources.

A State water problem-solving tool.  The 2023 Water Security Planning Act mandates that the NM Interstate Stream Commission (ISC), subject to funding, “shall establish and conduct a regional water security program pursuant to the provisions of the Water Security Planning Act.” The regional water security planning program is intended to be a New Mexico regional and community water resilience problem-solving tool.

🚨 Key Issues with the Discussion Draft Approach

❌ Planning starts before defining the actual problems – Expensive, time-intensive efforts should not begin without clear data on water availability, use, and future risks.
❌ Water rights are protected, but water supply is not – Long-term sustainability measures must ensure water remains available for downstream users and future generations.
❌ Plans list prioritized projects but do not evaluate solutions – Scenario-based analysis must weigh feasibility, costs, impacts, and water savings before prioritizing projects and policies that in combination are the chosen initial regional water security plan.
❌ Public engagement is procedural, not meaningful – Stakeholders need real input in problem identification, solution evaluation, and decision-making.
❌ Implementation is uncertain – Plans must include funding mechanisms, monitoring, update, and accountability to ensure follow-through.

✅ Proposed Guiding Principles for Effective Regional Water Security Planning

✅ Water planning is to solve water problems; the problems must be named.
✅ Data-driven problem definition must come before intensive planning.
✅ Legal water rights must be balanced with long-term water supply protection.
✅ Water planning must be grounded in independent science and holistic analysis.
✅ Regional planning must be efficient, practical, and produce actionable solutions.
✅ Stakeholder engagement must be structured to ensure meaningful participation.
✅ Planning efforts must be well-funded and include clear implementation pathways.

The ISC’s approach is not just inadequate—it’s a missed opportunity for real water security solutions. The NMISC 1/21/25 Discussion Draft Rules & Guidelines to implement the 2023 Act are minimal and don’t make sense. The discussion draft says nothing about the planning process other than constraints. It fails to address water security problems and risks. It appoints Planning Councils that will have dozens of members. It limits state funded planning efforts in each region to just two years and only two public meetings.

Limiting regional planning to two years does not allow sufficient time for comprehensive data collection, scientific modeling, stakeholder engagement, and long-term resilience strategy development. A more realistic timeline must be established based on the complexity of each region’s water challenges.

A colleague who read the discussion draft summarized the basic problem.
“For clarity, I offer this simple tool called CPR for Problem Solving. With very few exceptions it pretty much covers all the bases in any situation needing effective problem solving.
(C) WHAT = Content
(P) PROCESS = How
(R) RELATIONSHIP = Who

The rules and guidelines have a lot to say about WHAT, very little about PROCESS, and literally nothing about RELATIONSHIP. Relationships are FUNDAMENTAL to the success of a project of this scope and complexity. We are people!! We base so many of our decisions on the WHO. “

With these serious omissions, the discussion draft is an unsatisfactory initial response to the ISC’s fundamental statutory charge, which is to create, lead, and manage a program of regional water security planning that increases New Mexican’s water security.  The ISC’s successful open houses in 2024 required contractors to provide most of the logistics and publicity. That increased awareness and caused some thinking. Now we need some thoughtful discussions and real process expertise input to lay out an effective statewide program.

For the planning program to be effective, the rules must provide a clear, high-level framework for the Regional Water Security Planning Program, defining objectives, responsibilities, and implementation processes. The rules must describe the relationship and roles of ISC, regions, and communities so that the planners and decision-makers understand the limits and trends of their water supplies and evaluate alternatives for improving their resilience. Groundwater only regions must evaluate what it would take to protect groundwater quality and quantity to meet the needs of future generations of New Mexicans.

Planning program roles must reflect the will of the legislature, which was to delegate the authority and responsibility for regional planning to the regional councils. The ISC’s roles include the initial statewide program design, promulgating the required rules and guidelines, funding and assisting regions in multidisciplinary ways, assuring the state gets value from its public water planning investments, and approving regional water security plans. Under the law, the ISC’s approval of a regional water security plan means the ISC endorses the plan and recommends it to the Legislature for matching implementation funding.

Regional councils are to lead planning efforts based on local needs, with ISC providing data, models, and technical and financial support either directly or through contractors. The ISC will provide statewide hydrologic data and modeling tools, but regional councils must also conduct localized assessments to ensure that planning reflects site-specific realities and community priorities. Regions will define their shared values and solutions to water security challenges and must conduct substantial public education, outreach, and involvement. The ISC ensures alignment with statewide objectives and approves plans. Coordination must be sufficient so that neither ISC nor regional councils are surprised by the others’ decisions.

The Discussion Draft Rules and Guidelines must describe in more than cursory detail the ISC’s design of the Regional Water Security Planning Program.  They must incorporate the principles of rational water planning.  They must define and require good process.   They should be based on a vision, and that vision must be articulated.

🚀 Next Steps
Public comments on the draft Rules and Guidelines are due Feb 21.  This essay and its companion regarding Guiding Principles for water planning contain the basis of the Water Advocates comments.  Following the 30-day comment period, the ISC says it will consider the comments and then issue a second version of the Rules and Guidelines to be promulgated.

It’s unclear what opportunities the ISC will provide as part of its promulgation process for engagement and further consideration of comments before it finalizes the Rules and Guidelines, or what its schedule will be.

 

Time

From the President’s Desk: Preventing New Tragedies of NM’s Water Supply Commons

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The Tragedy of the Commons: A Lesson from an 8th Grader

Why do we struggle to act on problems we know are urgent? An 8th-grade Santa Fe girl’s January 28, 2025, public comment in support of passing Senate Bill 4 to comprehensively limit greenhouse gas emissions defines the problem and a simple solution.

“I have learned about the Tragedy of the Commons, which occurs when each well-meaning individual takes or uses only what they need, but the total is greater than the resource available. In the case of our environment, this plays out in small emissions that total more than our atmosphere can handle. … One of the best things we can do is impose regulations that cap resource use at a level that is sustainable for a long period of time.”

The concept applies to our water. The total of our individual, well-meaning uses are more than our water supplies can handle. As the Water Advocates explain in Our Water Crisis, overuse is causing growing New Mexico water supply security deficits for many communities. Opportunities are lost as time passes without action.

Water in New Mexico: Sacred Resource or Commodity?

We know that water is sacred, essential for all life. But we also see it as a mineral resource to be mined. The New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, after all, is New Mexico’s (top quality) water science agency. We have been using groundwater as a mineral resource, mining it across New Mexico for more than a century, Vast volumes have been removed. We don’t know in any dependable way how much groundwater remains, nor how fast our collective overuse is using up what is left.

New Mexico has many ghost towns, vibrant places until the minerals were mined out.

The Consequences of Inaction

Some aquifers don’t recharge at all or very much.  Water users who depend on such aquifers have two choices. One is to mine the water until it’s gone and suffer the consequences, including more ghost towns. The other is to reduce and stop unsustainable high-volume mining to leave enough water to meet the relatively small water needs of local communities long into the future. The sooner that step is taken, the more water remains for all future uses.

For example, the Ogallala aquifer is New Mexico’s first large-scale case of mining the water until it’s virtually gone, until municipal wells have faltered or run dry. Think of the people in Portales who are saying, “if only I had known.”

Think of Deming and the surrounding Mimbres Basin farming community, which formerly grew fruit and vegetables from accumulated groundwater in this closed basin, back when farm labor from Mexico was available. Now, the farmers mine groundwater to grow hay for mechanized harvest. Surely running out of water is a bad outcome. Inaction will surely deliver that outcome to Luna County. We don’t know when.

Pumping groundwater from aquifers interconnected with rivers is more complex because the aquifers do recharge from their rivers. Pumping groundwater takes water from the river, but days to decades in the future, depending on the hydrologic connection.

Diversions from the river, wells, and ditches by well-meaning individual Middle Rio Grande water users and institutions together take more water than the Middle Rio Grande’s share of of the river. The water delivery debt accrued since 2019 is dangerously close to the maximum allowed.

NM Water Deliverables Chart

Make no mistake. This overuse will stop, not because the water runs out but because we are using water that belongs to others downstream. Most of that water is allocated to Elephant Butte Irrigation District, for New Mexico farms.

Recent Interstate Stream Commission staff reports document official state estimates of current Rio Grande overuse:  17,000 to 18,000 acre-feet/year in the Lower Rio Grande and about 26,000 acre-feet/year in the Middle Rio Grande. It will take resources and political will to rein in that overuse.

The Challenge of Human Attention to Long-Term Problems

Human beings naturally struggle to focus on long-term issues like water security. Evolution has wired us to prioritize immediate threats over distant risks and to seek immediate rewards. This cognitive bias, known as present bias, causes us to underestimate future dangers and delay action until it is too late. Complex, slow-moving problems like growing water scarcity lack the urgency of immediate disasters, making them easier to ignore.

Another bias, normalcy bias, leads us to assume that the future will be much like the past, blinding us to the signs of an impending crisis. This is why, even as wells run dry and rivers shrink, many fail to recognize the urgency of sustainable water management.

However, this tendency can be overcome. Societal change often begins with heightened awareness, followed by collective action. When informed citizens demand accountability, leaders are compelled to act. Recognizing the slow-moving nature of water crises is the first step in shifting public consciousness and, ultimately, policy.

The Role of Political Will and Citizen Action

The primary barrier to effective water management is not technical expertise or scientific knowledge—it is political will. Politicians operate in environments driven by immediate demands, often prioritizing short-term issues over long-term sustainability. This is not a failure of leadership but a reflection of where public pressure is applied.

Citizens have the power to change this dynamic. By:

  • Raising Awareness: Talk about water issues in your community, with friends, and on social media.
  • Engaging with Leaders: Contact your legislators, attend public meetings, and demand that water security is prioritized.
  • Supporting Advocacy Groups: Collaborate with organizations working to influence water policy.

When citizens speak with a unified voice, leaders listen. Creating political will is not just about holding leaders accountable—it’s about giving them the mandate and public support they need to act boldly on long-term challenges.

The Call to Action

The 2025 Legislature faces a clear choice:

  1. Continue to underfund essential water management functions, risking avoidable crises; or
  2. Invest wisely in the future of New Mexico’s water security, ensuring resilience for generations to come.

This is not about optional programs; it’s about the fundamentals that determine whether our communities thrive or face preventable water crises.

New Mexico must finish what it has started, with adequate funding for water data, agency modernization, enforcement against illegal water use, and building the scientific understanding that supports sound decisions. The primary barrier is not technical; it’s political will. Let 2025 be the year we overcome that barrier. Citizens, your voices matter—now is the time to use them to secure our water future.

P.S. Don’t just read about the water crisis—understand it. The Water Advocates’ new website is your go-to resource for learning about the challenges facing our state. Explore the site, learn more, and share this and other vital articles with your friends and family. Our water future depends on it.

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