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Climate Impact

Understand how climate change is affecting New Mexico’s water resources, leading to reduced snowpack, earlier snowmelt, and increased evaporation.

MRG annual delivery credit or debit bar graph

New Mexico’s Water Emergency: What Must Be Funded

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We’re Asking the Governor & Legislature to Fund State Water Agencies to Secure A Better Water Future

Senator Liz Stefanics, Chair of both the Legislature’s Water and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Conservation Committee, asked water advocates to identify financial resources needed to confront New Mexico’s deepening water crisis. The New Mexico Water Advocates responded with three essential programs: Rio GrandeCompact Compliance, Water Data infrastructure, and Regional Water Security Planning.

These are not long-term wish-list items. They were recommended specifically by the 2022 New Mexico Water Policy and Infrastructure Task Force. They are well-vetted and justified emergency responses to New Mexico’s water crisis that is already destabilizing communities and ecosystems and threatening our economy. New Mexico is over-using its renewable water supplies while climate heating drives aridification and the decline of both groundwater and surface water resources. The State must improve its ability to comply with the Rio Grande Compact, to track and manage actual water use, and to plan realistically for a more resilient water future that is now in jeopardy.

These three programs are designed to meet the crisis and bring it under control. Together they build the State’s essential capacity to enforce water rights, meet New Mexico’s Rio Grande Compact obligations, generate and share reliable water data, and empower regional planning councils to act on that information. Only the State of New Mexico, through its agencies and technical institutions, has the authority and responsibility to do these essential jobs. With adequate funding to begin multi-year efforts this session, the State can start stabilizing the crisis and lay the foundation for science-based, transparent, and durable water governance. Without funding, New Mexico will remain in emergency mode—reacting to shortages, assuming the enormous risk and costs that a compact violation unleashes, and defending against new Texas litigation—instead of preventing or managing to mitigate them.

Rio Grande Compact Accrued Debit/Credit History

1) Rio Grande Compact Compliance

New Mexico must meet its delivery obligations to Texas and the United States while protecting communities and ecosystems in the Middle Rio Grande. We recommend:

  • $10 million (one-time) to the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) to implement the Lower Rio Grande settlement and prevent a new Rio Grande Compact violation due to Middle Rio Grande water overuse. At the current trend, we have only two years and perhaps only one to prevent new Texas v. New Mexico litigation. An emergency clause is needed to provide funding as early in 2026 as possible.
  • $1 million (recurring) for enforcement capacity—staff, office space, vehicles, and equipment—so the OSE can enforce Lower and Middle Rio Grande water rights.
  • Pass the Water Rights Enforcement bill, the 2025 measure to modernize an outdated statute that stalled on the Senate floor awaiting a final vote. The State Engineer needs workable administrative enforcement authority to stop illegal water uses without having to sue the user.

Why it matters: The Lower Rio Grande settlement requires New Mexico’s detailed plan in two years to substantially reduce Lower Rio Grande water use and full compliance in 10 years. At the present trend, Middle Rio Grande illegal water overuse will cause a compact violation in two years.

2) Water Data to Support Planning & Management

New Mexico’s water decisions are only as good as the data behind them. We recommend:

  • $7 million (one-time) to the OSE to replace the outdated water-rights database and application, build a real-time water-use database and application, and implement a modern management information system.
  • $3 million (one-time) to NM Tech for the Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources (NMBGMR) to contract with Water Data Act directing agencies to publish priority datasets to the state water data catalogue. These datasets will be selected in consultation with the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) to help ensure regional water planning councils have the best available science, data, and models.
  • $21.5 million (one-time) to NM Tech for NMBGMR to accelerate the statewide Aquifer Mapping Program—geophysics, new characterization and monitoring wells, and term staff—to illuminate where, how fast, and why groundwater conditions are changing.

Why it matters: You cannot manage what you don’t measure. These investments give local water managers, planners, and the public the transparent, timely information demanded by aridification, warming, and overuse.

3) Regional Water Security Planning

To make the Water Security Planning Act work on the ground, regions must organize credible councils and set pragmatic work plans. We recommend:

  • $4.8 million (one-time) to the OSE for the ISC to make grants to nine regional entities to stand up councils and develop work plans for Commission approval. The appropriation includes 6% for ISC administrative costs at $300,000.

Why it matters: Durable solutions are local and data driven. Funding regional councils to organize and plan with the best data available creates a transparent path from facts to decisions.

Bottom line: New Mexico is overusing declining renewable water supplies in a warming climate. The responsible fix is not slogans or one-off projects. It is steady, statewide capacity in water law enforcement, water data, aquifer science, and regional planning. Please urge your legislators to fund these requests and pass the enforcement bill this session. It’s the most cost-effective way to protect communities, economies, and rivers—not just this year, but for decades.

Filamentous algae growing on the Rio Grande bank at Pilar, NM

Low River Flows, High Water Temperatures and Rio Grande Algae Blooms

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Why is the Upper Rio Grande Green?

Visitors this past summer to the Río Grande del Norte National Monument observed that the river’s water, even upstream from its confluence with the Red River, appeared greenish. Why was that? As suggested in the above title, low river flows and high water temperatures, a result of climate warming as we described in a recent article, are part of the cause stimulating the greenish appearing algal growth in the river.

Fresh Water Algae

Some background first, freshwater algae have two main growth forms. Longer multi-celled strands of filamentous algae are most commonly found along shores and attached to rocks on the bottoms of slower flowing streams and rivers. Also, there are single celled algae, most species of which grow suspended in the water column. These are called phytoplankton.

Filamentous Algae at Pilar, NM river kayak & raft launch, N Gaume photo Sept 10, 2025
Filamentous Algae at Pilar, NM river kayak & raft launch, N Gaume photo Sept 10, 2025

Some of these single celled algae species also form small clumps of cells in the water column. In more extreme cases, clumps of some species can become obvious to the unaided eye; some can even appear looking like someone had dumped grass clippings into the water, as a public member once reported as having happen for a high mountain Montana reservoir where I was assessing its water quality.

Other forms of single cell algae also grow in clumps attached to rocks and other substrates, particularly along the stream bottoms. These are called periphyton and are a critical food source for larval insects, other invertebrates, and small fish, such as the endangered Rio Grande Silvery Minnow.

The taxonomic groupings of many algae classes are based on color. Green and blue-green algae being the two most common forms found in fresh waters.(Blue-green algae now are more technically and often called cyanobacteria, due to having internal cellular structures more like bacteria than algae, but they still produce energy through photosynthesis, like algae, and can fix elemental nitrogen into biologically useful compounds.) Strands of filamentous algae along shores and attached to the stream bottoms are most commonly green algae.

As the title above suggests, the greenish color of the river results from its low flow conditions and warm water temperatures, in part, with both tending to stimulate growth conditions for plankton that add their color to the water. Slow flowing or standing water is necessary for abundant planktonic algae to grow; higher flows with turbulence mixing tend to inhibit the growth of these algal forms.

Algae Growth at Pilar boating launch ramp, N Gaume photo Sept 10, 2025
Algae Growth at Pilar boating launch ramp, N Gaume photo Sept 10, 2025

Nutrients and Sources

The other likely cause of greenish appearing water and abundant plankton growth is commonly due to excess nutrients in the river. The nutrients of particular concern here are primarily nitrogen and phosphorus, which can occur in excess in the runoff from upstream agricultural fields and potentially from their residual concentrations in treated wastewater discharges and septic tank seepage to the river.

Of particular interest for the upper Rio Grande, drainage waters from volcanic geologies, prominent along the upper Rio Grande watershed, can include relatively high dissolved phosphorus concentrations. Such water chemistries can tend to favor growths of those blue-green algae species that can fix elemental nitrogen to stimulate their growth and population numbers. Without most detailed analysis of the river’s water chemistry, this can help to explain why the upper Rio Grande has appeared greenish, even blue-greenish this past summer.

Toxicity?

Here it is important to emphasize that not all types of blue-green algae produce toxins and those that can, do so mostly when water conditions are such for this to occur, which can include elevated water temperatures and nutrient chemistries. As such, this past summer the Bureau of Land Management was appropriate to issue caution regarding the potential for toxicants accompanying the their reports of blue-green blooms in the upper Rio Grande. Fortunately, it appears that no adverse toxic effects to individuals or pets seem to have occurred. That caution likely should continue into the future summers as recurring cyanobacteria blooms are likely to occur as climate warming continues and perhaps intensifies.

Additional Information

Bureau of Land Management. 2025. BLM field office notifies public about algae blooms in the Rio Grande. https://www.blm.gov/announcement/blm-field-office-notifies-public-about-algae-blooms-rio-grande

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2024. How People and Animals Get Sick From Harmful Algal Blooms. https://www.cdc.gov/harmful-algal-blooms/causes/index.html

NMPBS. 2019, Our Land: New Mexico’s Environment Past, Present, and Future–Toxic Blue-Green Algae Blooms in New Mexico Lakes. https://www.pbs.org/video/toxic-blue-green-algae-blooms-in-new-mexico-lakes-7hwkl2/

Marcus, M. 2025. New Mexico Drought, Aridification & Desertification.  https://nmwateradvocates.org/new-mexicos-water-crisis-drought-aridification-desertification/

Taos News. 2025. BLM investigates algae blooms in Rio Grande. https://www.taosnews.com/news/environment/blm-investigates-algae-blooms-in-rio-grande/article_d28ad8fb-676a-5d45-b875-96bc69e34702.html

Elephant-Butte-Reservoir-Aug-2022-38

New Mexico Drought, Aridification & Desertification

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Protecting Water, Farms, and Communities:

How Policy and Planning Can Protect New Mexicans From Their Hotter, Drier Future

Elephant Butte Reservoir, August 2022. Credit: The Water Desk, © Mitch Tobin, by permission.

Is New Mexico Really in a Drought?

We frequently hear and read that NM is in a drought. But then I recently learned that an acequia board commissioner says that he doesn’t believe we’re in a drought, just a temporary lack of water. So, what is a drought and are we in one?

Defining Drought: A Temporary Water Shortage

Going to the internet we learn that drought is generally defined as a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall or total precipitation, leading to a shortage of water for some activity, group, or environmental sector. It’s a complex phenomenon that can manifest differently depending on the region and the specific needs being affected. Droughts can last anywhere from a few weeks to several years. Certainly, NM and the SW would qualify as being in a drought as we have had a “shortage of water” for several years, at least. So, “drought” implies a temporary climatic condition that typically reverses within weeks, months, or a few years.

When Drought Becomes Aridification

But what should it be called when the water shortage period is longer, perhaps not reversible within a decade or perhaps much longer? Then, two additional terms become relevant to consider: aridification and desertification. Again, going to the Internet we learn that aridification refers to a gradual process during which a region becomes increasingly dry, moving towards an arid or desert-like climate. It’s not just about a temporary lack of rainfall (drought), but a long-term shift towards a drier state, often linked to climate change and increased temperatures.

Desertification: A Long-Term Climate Threat

In turn, we learn that desertification is the degradation of land in already dry regions, influenced by both natural factors (like climate change and droughts) and human activities. Certainly, NM and the SW would qualify as “land in already dry regions” and appear to be getting drier. Thus, both aridification and desertification are terms currently appropriate to apply to NM and the SW in general. A clear dividing line between the terms does not appear to exist.

Climate Warming as the Driving Force

Note that for both the concepts of aridification and desertification, climate change can lead to their defined conditions. Here it is important to recognize that the term “climate warming” as the actual cause now driving both concepts. It is the increasing rate that solar energy heats the atmosphere, causing the increased drying of soils as well as the alteration of historic wind, precipitation, hurricane, and other storm patterns, all of which can be collectively called “climate change.”

Scientific Evidence for Climate Change

We currently hear some politicians assert that claims of the ongoing patterns are climate change as being a hoax. They say we are not experiencing human-induced climate warming nor is climate change due to emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases occurring.

In contrast we know the simple facts that a great diversity of scientific investigations starting in at least in 1774 have shown that inputs of the sun’s energy heats the earth and our atmosphere. Then beginning in 1856, we additionally learned that increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air can produce a greater magnitude and persistence of atmospheric warming by the sun.

Today, there is abundant solid scientific evidence from modeling and monitoring, as well as from direct every-day observations that new records are being established locally and regionally for daily, seasonal, and annual high temperatures in the air around us as well as new records for the extents and durations regional floods and wildfires. These changes are being directly linked to climate warming alterations to air flow patterns, collectively disputing claims that increasing threats from climate change are a hoax.

Clearly, it is appropriate to claim that increasing aridification is occurring in NM and across the SW. What about claiming that desertification is occurring? Here we turn to scientific information produced by atmospheric modeling and monitoring. These results document how climate warming is significantly altering atmospheric circulation and causing shifts in wind patterns.

The Role of Atmospheric Circulation (Hadley Cells)

Of particular concern for us in the SW is how the atmospheric circulation patterns are changing. One of these major air circulation patterns (Hadley cells) result from hot, moist air rising from the equatorial tropics. This air then flows northward and southward, dropping  rain and drying out along the way until this dried air historically has fallen at about 30 degrees north and south latitude tending to produce dry often desert conditions on the ground below.

Monitoring has revealed that the downdraft edges of the Hadley cells have expanded poleward by about one degree latitude in each hemisphere, with the magnitude of the expansion dependent on global temperature increases. The scientific literature reports that this indicates the total amount of latitudinal expansion of the Hadley cells over the period 1979–2005 was about two degrees in latitude, north and south. Over that same period the increase in global temperature was about 0.5°C.  The poleward edges of the Hadley Cells appear to move about two degrees poleward in latitude for each degree Celsius of global warming.  Of interest here, the internet tells us that, “Current policies are projected to lead to a 2.7°C median warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100.”

Currently, the rate of climate warming is expected to increase steadily as the United States’ past regulatory efforts to constrain or even to reverse climate change are now themselves being reversed. Based on the above temperature increase and  the Hadley cells expansion rate, the northern (and southern) drying down draft of desert forming air could move its historical location of approximately 30 degrees latitude north (and south) to approximately 35.4 degrees.

What Desertification Means for New Mexico

Albuquerque is located at about 35 degrees north latitude. Therefore, due to the increasing likelihood of rapid atmospheric warming, it is clearly appropriate to describe NM as being at present risk from desertification, if it is not already impacting some, particularly southern, part of our state.

Water Resource Challenges in the Middle Rio Grande Valley

These climate warming projections point to the urgent needs for NM and other SW states to implement new, dynamic approaches for water resource management. This becomes a particular concern for those living along the Middle Rio Grande Valley who are being threatened both by prospects of desertification increasing into the future and by requirements to meet Rio Grande Compact delivery flows to Elephant Butte Reservoir. (We have previously characterized the pending crisis related to the Compact: https://nmwateradvocates.org/middle-rio-grande-compact-compliance-crisis-deepens/).

Acequia Traditions and Shortage Sharing

When periods of drought threaten acequia communities these threats are addressed through a practice called “shortage sharing.” Typically, since all acequia members know each other and work together to maintain their acequia system, they develop levels of empathy toward each other and share the water shortages to ensure that no one suffers disproportionally.

Conclusion: Preparing for a Drier Future

Current and upcoming water shortages along the MRG valley and elsewhere across NM require even a greater degree of water user empathy toward each other to implement the magnitude of shortage sharing now becoming required.  Of concern, MRG water users lack the level of neighborly relationships found in acequia communities.  Therefore, to develop the necessary regional-scale of water management that can produce water distribution equities similarly to those found with acequia shortage sharing clearly requires extensive regional planning efforts that we discussed elsewhere (https://nmwateradvocates.org/why-nm-water-planning-matters/).

Looking north at the Rio Bravo Bridge

When the Great River Dies Into Its Bed

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What do some residents do on an early August Sunday evening when the Great River dies into its Albuquerque bed?

They create large clouds of dust and noise with racing ATVs.

They look upstream on August 3 at the Rio Bravo Bridge across the wet clay, cracked mud, and dry sand.

There is no flow. All the water flowing in the river at Bernalillo and all remnants of the big storm on July 31 have disappeared into the sand.

Downstream slightly, people are fishing and hanging out where a tributary temporarily restores the river’s flow.

People hanging out at the treated wastewater discharge to the Rio Grande. A puddle of effluent is to the left, where the river once flowed. Downstream is to the right.

The tributary is the Albuquerque wastewater treatment plan discharge, the third largest tributary to the river by annual volume. Now the discharge is 100% groundwater pumped from beneath the City, that has passed through our plumbing, and has been treated. Now, the river is only discharge, for a few more miles. Are there really fish there?

Rio Grande at Albuquerque, no pools in sight, late July 2025 Photo: Wesley Noe

Why Water Planning Matters

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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: Wesley Noe
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 local business leaders and public officials. It may be difficult to bring recalcitrant parties to the table, but easier as they come to understand the risks 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 schedule-regional planning will wait until 2029 and beyond
ISC staff presentation to the Commission on June 18, 2025. Water Advocates photo
NM Regional Water Planning Boundaries

From the President’s Desk: Reclaiming the Water Security Planning Act

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A Smarter Path Forward for New Mexico

The Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) staff’s proposed rule to implement the 2023 Water Security Planning Act (WSPA) is structurally flawed, legally overreaching, and misaligned with the law’s purpose. The WSPA was enacted to support decentralized, data-informed, and science-based water security planning across New Mexico. Instead, the proposed rule concentrates inappropriate, poorly defined authority in the hands of ISC staff.

It presumes that internal staff policy decisions—many of which constrain regional initiative—should be embedded in rule, without ever being considered by the Commission. It contradicts the Act’s clear delegation of planning responsibilities to regional councils. It even instructs councils to proceed with planning whether or not data are lacking, undermining the scientific integrity that the WSPA mandates.

Despite taking two years to prepare, the proposed rule is vague, contradictory, and fails to meet drafting standards for state rules. The staff-proposed rule lacks clarity, misinterprets statutory intent, and fails to learn important lessons from failures of past ISC-directed regional water planning in New Mexico that used imaginary information.

This article outlines core flaws in the proposed rule and proposes a smarter path forward: pause the rulemaking, adopt interim guidelines that fund and support regional initiative, and return to the formal rule process only after meaningful engagement, learning, and course correction—grounded in statute and committed to decentralization. The Water Advocates described the flaws and pointed out the better way in public comments offered for the Commission’s consideration.

The proposed rule substitutes staff discretion for Commission-level decisions and undermines both scientific integrity and the decentralized authority that the Act assigns to regional councils.

The Water Advocates Support the ISC’s definition of the regional water planning council areas, as shown. The boundaries make sense and are well examined by ISC staff and explained.

Centralized Control Where Regional Responsibility Is Required

At it’s heart, the WSPA is a commitment to decentralized planning: regional councils are charged with developing water security plans, while the state is to support councils’ work by providing technical and financial support with clear content and approval  criteria. The Act requires the Commission to define council composition, support plan development, and approve plans based on established rules. Nowhere does it authorize the ISC staff to initiate the formation of regional councils or approve each  council’s membership.

Yet the proposed rule does exactly that. Rule 10 A.(1) asserts that NMISC staff will invite government entities to select representatives and will convene the initial meeting of each council. This is a fundamental overreach. The WSPA assigns the duty of plan development to regional councils themselves. The Commission’s statutory role is to establish composition standards—not to centrally initiate, schedule, or approve when and how councils form. Rule 10(C) makes this overreach worse by stating that self-organized councils must be “confirmed by NMISC staff”—but confirmed according to what criteria? The rule provides no standards, thresholds, or procedural guidance.

The problem extends further. Staff would be granted authority to review and approve council composition when vacancies occur, with no defined criteria, timeline, or appeal process. Rule 12 empowers staff to substitute non-voting members for voting members if a “qualified or willing” representative cannot be identified—but fails to define either term or require Commission oversight. These and other provisions allow staff to shape council membership and authority with excessive discretion, undermining the WSPA’s statutory structure by assigning staff roles the law reserves for regional councils or the Commission itself.

Many regional leaders lack only a legitimate framework and resourcing strategy that honors their statutory roles and the decentralization mandate.

Failure to Meet Statutory Requirements

The WSPA includes several specific rulemaking mandates that the proposed rule fails to fulfill. Two are particularly critical:

  • Section 8(C)(1)(c) requires rules that establish a procedure for regional entities to develop and notify the Commission of regional public welfare concerns.
  • Section 8(C)(1)(e) requires rules that establish a procedure for regional entities to consider public welfare values and the needs of future generations.

The proposed rule establishes no procedure for Councils to raise such concerns to the Commission, and no structured process for evaluating those concerns in regional planning. These omissions are direct failures to implement core provisions of the statute.

Integrity of Planning

Scientific integrity is another area where the proposed rule falls short. The rule language evades the statute’s clear mandate that the Commission must both provide the best information and ensure it is used with scientific integrity.

The Water Security Planning Act plainly requires the Commission to ensure “the best science, data, and models relating to water resource planning are available to the regional water planning [councils] and are used with scientific integrity and adherence to principles of honesty, objectivity, transparency, and professionalism.” It further requires the ISC to carry out this responsibility in collaboration with the Bureau of Geology and to do so through Bureau’s New Mexico Water Data Initiative.

Four directing agencies contribute to the Water Data Initiative
Credit: NM Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources

The proposed rule omits any reference to this specific ISC duty and makes no mention of the Water Data Act platform. The rule instead offers only vague references to “assistance with accessing” data. Worse still, the proposed rule says, “Councils may not delay the development of or updates to a plan due to lack of data.”

Water planning without water data is not water planning with integrity. The rule drafters may have had a more complex idea in mind, but the language is too terse to communicate the circumstances where Councils may not delay due to lack of data.

Nothing good came from the ISC’s 2018 regional water planning updates that ISC asked be completed without real data. New Mexico has seen the costs of ISC’s turning its back on scientific and decision integrity during the Gila River Diversion process from 2004 through 2020.  The 2023 Water Security Planning Act explicitly corrects those problems, among its many changes. The proposed rule doesn’t operationalize these reforms.

New Mexico has seen the damage and waste caused by ISC politicized water planning that flaunted scientific integrity. ISC pursued a 4th iteration of the clearly infeasible Gila River Diversion project from 2004 until they finally stopped work in 2020. ISC modeling, public meetings, and reporting were deliberately misleading, professionally indefensible, and extremely wasteful, costing at least $16 million in federal funds and diverting many years of ISC’s limited staff resources to a boondoggle. The ISC even manipulated the Southwest New Mexico Regional Water Plan to prioritize the infeasible diversion project, causing that endeavor to be wasted, too.  The Gila River Diversion Project case is the reason the 2023 Water Security Planning Act includes the bolded sentence quoted above.

 Schedule

ISC staff presented this slide to the Commission 0n June 18, 2025. The ISC planning chief’s remarks indicated staff wants to deny six of the nine regions the opportunity to participate in state funded regional water planning until 2032 or after.  The staff rule is silent on the schedule, delaying that discussion for a future Commission proceeding.

ISC schedule-regional planning will wait until 2029 and beyond
ISC staff presentation to the Commission on June 18, 2025. Norm Gaume photo

A Better Path Forward: Pause, Activate, Align

Given these failings, the Commission should immediately pause its current rulemaking process. The draft rule as written cannot be the foundation for a planning program that meets legal standards, inspires public trust, empowers regions to confront their water challenges, or expands the number of minds engaged in New Mexico’s water resources problem-solving.

Instead, the Commission should adopt an interim approach using its statutory authority to fund regional activities. The Commission can and should adopt simple, short-form interim guidelines (not a full rule) to activate regional initiative through flexible early-stage grants. These guidelines would:

  • Allow grants to eligible fiscal agents for existing or new groups formed by regional initiative to carry out early regional organizing work;
  • Support activities such as convening intergovernmental forums, convening inclusive regional meetings, identifying and engaging local stakeholders, initiating council formation consistent with WSPA-mandated composition rules, or conducting preliminary needs assessments;
  • Require transparency and accountability through basic reporting
  • Allow regions to design their own path toward formal council establishment and plan development.

This approach enables planning regions to take initiative in a manner tailored to local realities—without entrenching a rigid, staff-controlled structure that predetermines the shape of regional councils or the methods of engagement. It also allows state support to flow quickly and equitably across the state, even as the formal rulemaking process is paused.

Importantly, many regional and tribal entities already possess the relationships, capacity, and readiness to engage in meaningful planning. What they lack is a legitimate framework and resourcing strategy that honors their statutory role.

The Commission should pause the rule, activate regional initiative through interim guidelines, and return to rulemaking only after real public input and on-the-ground experience.

Re-Centering the Commission’s Role

Perhaps most importantly, this alternative approach would restore the proper institutional balance between the Commission and its staff. Under the WSPA, the nine-member Interstate Stream Commission—not its staff—is the statutory deliberative and policy-making body.

The July 17, 2025, Commission meeting revealed that staff had already made key structural and policy decisions without presenting them to the Commission for public deliberation or approval. Commissioners had not been briefed on decision options. Staff had not analyzed alternatives. Staff withheld critical information from public meetings and embedded its staff-centric and centralized control policy choices in the draft rule.

Moreover, the staff-led public engagement process was inadequate. It relied heavily on dot-voting at open houses and through the mainstreamnm.org platform, which limited public learning and discouraged narrative input. While the Water Advocates and others submitted detailed written critiques, staff failed to present these to the Commission in a structured or comprehensive form. At no point did ISC staff convene a public forum where stakeholders could learn from one another or engage with subject matter experts. The process appeared designed to generate superficial evidence of consensus on simple points rather than support meaningful public input and policy guidance.

By pausing rulemaking and adopting interim guidelines, the Commission can reclaim its deliberative policymaking role and publicly structure the development of a planning program with a set of rules that meets both the letter and spirit of the WSPA.

Conclusion

The ISC staff’s proposed rule gets the Water Security Planning Act wrong in both structure and intent. It centralizes what the law seeks to decentralize. It assigns staff discretionary authority where the law assigns Commission oversight. And it fails to implement key statutory provisions that are essential to meaningful, lawful planning.

A better path is available: pause the rulemaking. Activate regional initiative through interim guidelines providing for flexible grants. Re-center the Commission’s policymaking authority. And only after sufficient on-the-ground engagement, regional mobilization, and public input, return to the rulemaking process with a foundation grounded in statute, experience, and trust. That’s how New Mexico can begin to build true water security community by community, region by region, starting now.

Otowi Bridge Volumes Down Trend rev 6-11-25

From the President’s Desk: Sliding Closer To the Brink

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Middle Rio Grande Compact Violation Looms as Water Use Outpaces Legal Limits

I joined a small group of Santa Feans concerned about New Mexico’s water future at their June 3rd monthly breakfast meeting. I appreciated the invitation from Denise Fort, who organizes these and the chance to speak directly with folks who care deeply about our state’s most pressing water issues.

Tragedy of the commons: each user of a common pool resource pursues their own needs with only self-imposed limits, but the cumulative result is system-wide overuse

We had an animated conversation about New Mexico’s almost silent, almost unknowing drift to the brink of a brand-new Rio Grande Compact violation. In the Middle Rio Grande, we are living the tragedy of the commons: each user pursues their own needs within self-imposed limits, but the cumulative result is a system-wide overuse that exceeds our legal share under the Compact. Our surface water supply this year is near record lows, yet our demands continue—pushing groundwater pumping to unsustainable levels. We prepared the graphics below to illustrate the situation demanding New Mexico’s and the Middle Valley’s adaptation.

 

When 2025 began, New Mexico had a 76,000 acre-feet margin before violating the Compact’s 200,000 acre-feet cumulative under-delivery limit. But by my calculations, as of the end of May we’ve delivered only 39% of the Otowi Index Flow—when we should have delivered 57%. That puts us 38,000 acre-feet behind on required deliveries already this year, using up half of our remaining margin in just five months.

Without a strong monsoon, we risk triggering a new lawsuit from Texas in the U.S. Supreme Court. Former ISC Director Rolf Schmidt-Petersen and I agree: without a strong monsoon, New Mexico is at risk to violate the Rio Grande Compact under-delivery limit this year, and if not this year, in 2026.

The group discussion raised hard questions: Who knows? Who cares? Why must New Mexico’s water overuse, even that that creates shortages for other New Mexicans, be managed retroactively by judicial order rather than proactively by our elected and appointed officials?

It’s worth noting: the only prolific aquifer in the state that provides water to many irrigators and is well-managed against overuse got its governance start with a New Mexico judicial order about 90 years ago. (If you know which one, you’re paying attention. Hint: it’s in southeast NM)

A Presentation Worth Watching

A welcomed bright spot came at our May 15 Water Advocates workshop, where Nat Chakeres gave the most accessible and well-organized presentation I’ve seen on the Middle Rio Grande compact situation. Nat, General Counsel to the New Mexico State Engineer, not only explained the problem—he presented a new, bold policy approach to confronting it.

I’ve posted a 53-minute video focused only on Nat’s policy presentation, cutting the before-and-after material. It’s essential viewing for anyone concerned about the Compact. My draft log listing Nat’s time-stamped recording segments is available. Visit nmwateradvocates.org/events for the full workshop video, including Q&A, and his slide deck.

Thanks to Nat for his candor, clarity, and courage—and to State Engineer Liz Anderson, whose leadership made these strategic shifts possible. State Engineer Anderson represents a new generation of leadership. The NM Senate confirmed her appointment during the 2025 Legislature. We look forward to hearing the details and timing of her strategy to rein in unsustainable water overuse in the Middle Rio Grande and prevent more U.S. Supreme Court litigation with Texas.

Upcoming: Basin Study Community Organizations Sector

The Rio Grande Basin Study is entering its next phase—modeling how different climate storylines affect water supply and demand and testing strategies for adaptation. Compact compliance will be a hard constraint for an acceptable adaptation approach.

The Bureau of Reclamation invited the Water Advocates to convene a Community Organizations committee to formally participate. We did in 2021, but the effort was premature. We’re restarting that effort now that the timing is right. A virtual meeting is set for June 24 at 10:30 a.m. Community organizations from the headwaters to Elephant Butte Dam are welcome. If you represent one and are interested in participating, please contact me directly. We will all learn a lot, from the modeling and from each other.

Reclamation staff will join us on June 24 to present and answer questions. Reclamation’s Rio Grande Basin Study is fully funded and will proceed to completion in another two to three years, unless the national Basin Study program is terminated. If completed, it will help show us what we must do to adapt to living with far less water.

Meanwhile, at the Capitol

After the breakfast, I attended the organizing meeting of the Water and Natural Resources Interim Committee. There were more legislators present than the dais and tables set in front of the dais could accommodate in one of the large Capitol committee rooms. The pending Middle Rio Grande Compact violation and risk of litigation was not among the priority topics identified by legislators for committee evaluation—at least while I was there. In contrast, the Lower Rio Grande litigation, desalination, aquifer mapping, and regional water security planning were named priorities by multiple legislators.

I offered a brief public comment about the urgent compact situation. Senator Larry Scott followed me out and asked for clarification—he had not been aware of the Compact risk or the potential for new US Supreme Court Texas v. New Mexico case.  I report this only to say this is a criticism of our state water agencies and the Executive. The failure to communicate is on them.

Let Us All Do Our Part

This isn’t just about lawsuits or water law. It’s about protecting our home—now and for future generations. We must summon the courage to acknowledge what’s happening and adapt to living with less water.

In your own way, pray for New Mexico’s water leadership—those already engaged and those who are emerging. Pray for the monsoon. And pray for New Mexico, our querencia, so precious, so close to Texas.

US Drought Monitor amalgam 5-22-25

Water Authority Drought Message Contradicts Reality

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As of May 2025, the U.S. Drought Monitor shows that Albuquerque is gripped by Drought Stage D3—Extreme Drought. Nearly 97% of Bernalillo County is in the same condition, along with most of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Basin.

Yet, the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority says we’re in Drought Stage D0—a designation that, in the Authority’s framework, means customers are conserving more water than the utility’s target. This internal metric, however, is not a hydrologic drought indicator. It contradicts observable realities and misleads the public.

This disconnect matters. The Authority is heavily pumping groundwater to meet demand. The Middle Rio Grande’s surface water is already over-allocated, and vast stretches of the river from Elephant Butte to Albuquerque will likely be dry this summer. Despite this, the utility tells customers there’s no cause for concern.

Two slides below are copied from a water resources presentation posted for the May 21 Water Authority Board meeting. They show that the utility’s definitions are decoupled from actual drought conditions, such as those recognized by federal agencies.

At the same meeting, the Board adopted its FY2026 budget. Discussion revealed that customer conservation is reducing utility revenue, threatening the Water Authority’s ability to meet debt service and annual operating costs.

So what does the utility do? It downplays the drought. Never mind that:

  • 2025 snowpack produced very little water.

  • Middle Rio Grande water users are consuming water legally allocated to downstream users under the Rio Grande Compact,

  • Without urgent state action, the region’s cumulative water debt could exceed the Compact’s legal limit this year or next, subjecting New Mexico’s water management to judicial discretion.

From the Water Advocates’ perspective, the problem is deeper than misleading messaging. No one is taking effective charge. No public agencies are acting with the urgency that increasing aridity coupled with extreme drought conditions demand.

The Water Authority undermines its own credibility — and fails its customers and the region’s economy — by using internally defined drought stages that obscure reality rather than reflect it. We urge the Authority to adopt transparent, science-based drought metrics and to communicate honestly with the public about the very real risks we all face.

2025 Non-Recurring Appropriations for Water Programs

The 2025 Legislature’s Water Priorities—Follow the Money

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Follow the Money: What the 2025 Legislature Funded—And What It Didn’t

The final version of the 2025 General Appropriation Act tells a clearer story than the session itself: when the dust settled, the Legislature prioritized water infrastructure and dirty water development projects over science-based management and environmental stewardship. While critical needs in clean water access and infrastructure received attention, both the Governor and the Legislature shortchanged programs focused on protecting, conserving, and managing New Mexico’s water resources.

Advocates pleaded, to no avail, for multi-year appropriations to implement the very laws the Legislature has already passed.

The House adopted one-time (non-recurring) water funding allocations—many of which were later slashed by the Senate. These cuts disproportionately affected programs grounded in science, water data, and environmental cleanup.Many of those cuts targeted programs rooted in water data, science, and environmental cleanup. The result: funding levels fell tens of millions of dollars below both the House budget and the Governor’s official budget recommendation.  Click the graphic to download a larger copy.

The Legislature also transferred $200 million of General Fund revenue to the Water Project Fund for specific water and wastewater infrastructure projects authorized by HB206.

Key Cuts Included:

  • NMED cleanup of contaminated sites: Cut by $30 million by the Senate, leaving $20 million

  • NMED River Stewards Program: Entire $7 million request eliminated by the Senate

  • NM Tech Aquifer Mapping Program: Cut by a total of $22 million in the House and Senate, leaving $7.5 million

  • NMED low-interest water and wastewater loans: Cut by $5 million by the Senate, leaving $15 million

  • Governor’s ‘Strategic’ Treated Brackish Water Supply: Cut by $25 million, leaving $40 million for a project that remains unvetted, undefined, and controversial

Other critical science and management-focused programs were already reduced in the Governor’s budget before the session even began—and then further cut by the House:

  • OSE Water Rights Enforcement, Middle Rio Grande: Cut $0.5 million in the House, leaving nothing.

  • Indian Water Rights Settlement Matching Funds: Cut by $15 million, leaving $25 million.

The Legislature’s priorities are clear: funding flowed to infrastructure, water quality enforcement, and so-called ‘new water’ concepts more than stewardship, enforcement against illegal water use, and data and science-driven water resources management and planning. Large appropriations went to the New Mexico Environment Department for water quality assurance and clean-up programs, infrastructure, and brackish water development for high water use industries.

The 2025 Legislature gave little attention—or funding—to the Office of the State Engineer and the Interstate Stream Commission to:

  • Plan for adapting to a future with much less water,
  • Establish effective water data systems, and
  • Enforce against illegal water use and protect against the impacts of Middle Rio Grande overuse

The Legislature has already passed three major laws to support these purposes. Two—the 2019 Water Data Act and the 2023 Water Security Planning Act—passed unanimously. The third law, which requires the State Engineer to administer water to prevent interstate stream compact violations, was upheld unanimously by the New Mexico Supreme Court, along with the detailed rules it authorized.

The political will to prioritize New Mexico’s adaptation to a future with far less water has not yet emerged. The Governor’s and Legislature’s funding choices still fall short of the understanding and leadership our water and economic security urgently require.

Rio Chama SWE at zero percentile 3-38-25

Rio Chama Snowpack Sets New Record Lows

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The Rio Chama snowpack holds less water today than on this date in any year since measurements began—zero percentile. Click the graphic to download a larger version.

The red line at the bottom marks the historical minimum. The black line shows this year’s measurements. The red shaded area represents the bottom 10th percentile. The green band spans the 30th to 70th percentiles. The top blue line indicates the historical maximum, with the top 10th percentile shaded in blue.

In early March, the Bureau of Reclamation issued its Rio Grande Annual Operating Plan, based on similarly low snowpack measurements across the headwaters. The plan forecasts Rio Grande flows from the source to Texas. This graphic shows the forecast for prolonged dry river conditions at Bosque Farms and San Acacia—briefly interrupted, we hope, by summer monsoon spikes.

Here we go: 2025—our next record-setting hot, dry year.

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