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Learn about the importance of collaborative efforts among diverse stakeholders to address New Mexico’s water challenges and ensure a sustainable water future.

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.

Montage Produced Water Rulemaking Civic Action Victory

Major Civic Action Victory in Fracking Wastewater Rulemaking

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Fracking Waste Reuse Hype Defeated by Science and Citizen Action

In December 2023, from the global stage of COP28 in Dubai, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced a headline-grabbing initiative: a $500 million Strategic Water Supply program that would purchase and bank treated brackish and “produced water” (oil and gas fracking wastewater) at many locations across New Mexico to support future industrial development. The announcement touted desalinated oilfield waste as a climate-resilient water source for high-tech manufacturing, hydrogen production, and energy storage industries.

Back home in New Mexico, however, the Governor’s uninformed vision collided with the scientific and legal realities of water quality protection. The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), aligning with the Governor’s initiative, proposed a new water quality rule that would have opened the door for discharges of treated fracking waste into the environment, without establishing enforceable scientific standards or demonstrating treatment efficacy or safety.

Objectionable elements of NMED’s December 2023 proposed rule included:

  • Produced water reuse for non-oil industry purposes without a permit in undefined and unconstrained Industrial Projects and Demonstration Projects.
  • No criteria for treatment performance, reuse safety, and waste disposal.
  • No location constraints except not publicly accessible.
  • No requirement for any public notice or hearings
  • No size limit
  • No provisions for enforcement

In response, New Energy Economy (NEE) intervened as a party in the Water Quality Control Commission’s (WQCC) formal rulemaking.  The highly effective NEE Executive Director / Attorney Mariel Nanasi led the opposition, legally and strategically.  Disclosure:  The author served as an expert witness for NEE, presenting technical testimony (direct, rebuttal, and surrebuttal) during 11 days of hearings in May and August 2024.

The outcome: total victory for science, public health, and civic engagement

  • Discharge of produced water—treated or untreated—is prohibited under the new rule.
  • Industrial Projects and Demonstration Projects are gone.
  • Pilot projects are strictly limited to no more than 2,000 barrels/day, which is equal to 0.08 million gallons per day, or 1/4 acre-foot per day.
  • Pilot projects require individual permits and scientific protocols including full data reporting.
  • The permit application process requires public notice and opportunities for formal public participation.
  • The Water Quality Control Commission explicitly found that no reliable scientific data currently supports setting standards for the treatment, reuse, or discharge of produced water.
  • The rule sunsets in 2030, allowing time for legitimate research—should it emerge—to inform future policy.
  • The burden of characterizing the produced water and demonstrating the effectiveness of treatment is placed squarely on industry, not the public or regulators.

It became clear over the course of the public hearing, with all witness sworn to tell the truth, that Secretary Kenney was the source of illegal elements of the the Environment Department’s initially proposed rule. His office required the initial NMED draft rule to allow the Industrial Projects and Demonstration Projects without the permit from the NMED required by the 2019 Produced Water Act and the standards and regulations for off-oil field use required by 2019 amendments to the Water Quality Act.

Also newsworthy is a leadership change for the Produced Water Research Consortium (PWRC), which had functioned as promotional arm for fracking wastewater treatment and reuse as a solution to New Mexico water resources scarcity. Consortium Director Mike Hightower, the Consortium’s founding director and architect of the reuse narrative, participated. His sworn testimony was different from his public rhetoric.  Under oath, he admitted the Consortium has no reliable data on treatment in its empty database. He agreed 18 months would be needed to generate the data.  The Commission and parties took note of a formerly secret “NMSU external review committee” report by experts that was highly critical of the consortium’s lack of focus, management, and performance.

NMSU just announced to consortium members that Mr. Hightower is stepping down, replaced by Dr. Zach Stoll, a New Mexico State University civil engineering professor and national desalination expert.  Dr. Stoll’s told the consortium membership in December 2024 he estimated the cost of adequately treating produced water for reuse at $5 per barrel, or roughly $40,000 per acre-foot—a figure that makes any claimed economic feasibility highly dubious, particularly in comparison to existing water supplies or conservation alternatives.

The Commission’s ruling represents a landmark defeat of pseudoscience and political overreach. It reaffirms that water quality regulation must be grounded in sound science, not speculative economic development schemes.

This case provides an instructive example of how public interest legal and scientific advocacy, technical rigor, and sustained civic engagement can still triumph in the public interest over the oil and gas industry and political demands.  In the end, it was the sustained engagement by hundreds of concerned New Mexican that made the difference.

 

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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Water: An Urgent Community Problem Requiring A Community-Driven Solution

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Fulbright Scholars from Argentina, ending a three-week Young Leaders program at the University of New Mexico, said, “water is a community problem. Research continues to find problems and propose solutions that don’t reach the people. …The only way to generate sustainable solutions is to understand water as a collective action problem and empower the people to take action.” They were focusing on the Middle Rio Grande, but their findings are applicable to public water commons across our beloved New Mexico.

UNM’s three-week program for this year’s cohort of Argentine Young Leaders was titled Peace through Policymaking. They viewed Argentine and the Middle Rio Grande case studies problems through the Peace Engineering framework that uses science and data to define problems and to vet solutions. Peace in this context does not mean the opposite of war. It means the reduction of violence, broadly construed. Peace Engineering explicitly seeks 1) public health in all policy, 2) justice, equity, accessibility, diversity, and inclusion, and 3) climate change sustainability. 

I’ve instinctively applied Peace Engineering concepts since becoming a water policy engineer in 1990. This summer, I’ve learned about the Peace Engineering framework and researched collective action, the Argentine scholars’ overarching recommendation. I believe the Peace Engineering and Nobel Prize winning collective action frameworks will be helpful to organize our water problem-solving to implement 21st century solutions to our more arid climate change future.

As a student at NMSU in the late 1960s, Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons essay caught my attention. Recently, a Water Advocates board member used the Tragedy of the Commons phrase to describe water in the Middle Rio Grande. 

In researching the Argentine scholars’ collective action recommendation to generate community-driven solutions to the community problems of overuse of our shrinking water resources commons, I Iearned sustainability thinking focuses now on Ending the Tragedy of the Commons.  

Nobel Prize winning research and theory, by Dr. Elinor Ostrom and her spouse, shows polycentric collective action and polycentric governance works to find and implement community solutions to sustain natural resource commons. In simple terms, it means what the Argentine’s recommended slogan says, “Water is Life! Do your Part.” Various levels of government must all do their parts. Water users, including all of us, must do theirs.

Breaking down polycentric governance, 

Governance means all the processes which determine the range of acceptable individual or collective choices available to members of the associated group or community.

Since poly means many, the meaning of polycentric governance emerges naturally: a system in which many diverse centers of partial authority collectively cover the full range of governance tasks.  Quoted from this source.

We need polycentric collective action to define our problems; to understand the limits of our water. As Hannah Risely-White, the newly appointed ISC Director, told me after the new regional water planning law passed, “The state is going to need all the help it can get.”  

Only through multiple centers of collective action undertaken with scientific integrity, prioritizing public health, and seeking justice, equity, accessibility, diversity, and inclusion in our planning processes and solutions, can we define how we can best equitably adapt to a future with much less water while preserving water for future generations of New Mexicans. The state will never solve these problems top down. Our collective action can and must. 

We need not reinvent. The Peace Engineering and Dr. Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons concepts provide compatible frameworks for New Mexico’s robust new statewide regional water planning program. 

We must adhere to the letter and spirit of the law.  The core of our community problem of overuse is state government’s inability to sustainably govern the public water commons required for our lives.  But we can through collective action, work within existing law, to materialize community solutions.      

Presentations at the International Peace Engineering Symposium at UNM in June 2023 explain Peace Engineering and related topics.  All of the presentations are available on YouTube. I particularly recommend Drexel University Dean of Engineering Dr. Joseph Hughes’ enlightening introduction and University of New Mexico Dean of Engineering Dr. Donna Riley’s place-based definition.

Knowing and applying these concepts will get us a long way. Please visit our website again for more information, coming soon.

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Argentine Fulbright Scholars Recommendations for New Mexico’s Water Future

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Twenty of Argentina’s best and brightest young scholars spent three weeks at UNM in June evaluating two water case studies through the Peace Engineering framework, which seeks the reduction of violence through policymaking. Violence in the water problem context is broadly construed to include harm to each other, water institutions, public health, equity and diversity, and cultural values, for example.  Their theme was Peace through Policymaking.  One of their case studies was the Middle Rio Grande. The other was in Argentina.  

Their insightful policy recommendations focused on sustainability, inclusion, equity, research, alliances, water governance reform, and public education and incentives.  They characterized New Mexico’s water problems as community problems that require community-driven solutions through collective action.  Politicians and decisionmakers roles are to measure and govern.  Urban and suburban communities must be aware of and reduce excessive water consumption.  Rural communities must transition to low consumption crops and efficient irrigation. They outlined a public campaign with this slogan:  Water is Life! Do your Part.  The Argentine Fulbright scholars recommendations are summarized in the slides they presented on June 23, their last day in New Mexico.   Their report and a short campaign video will be available in the coming months.  

The 2023 cohort of Argentine Fulbright scholars was selected from over 400 applicants that met academic and achievement criteria. All graduated recently and are practicing professionals in public policy, law, or are studying for advanced degrees. 

UNM Engineering and Global Programs faculty and administrators invited Norm Gaume, a retired New Mexico water resources expert and President of the Middle Rio Grande Water Advocates, to present the Middle Rio Grande Case Study. He used these slides to introduce the Argentine scholars’ presentation of their recommendations on the final day of their three weeks in New Mexico. The Argentine scholars really engaged in the Middle Rio Grande case study, including asking questions with elected and appointed officials and people they met. They concluded that New Mexico’s water governance is not rational.  Their recommendations are worthy of our careful consideration.  

Early on, the scholars took note of the scientific poll of New Mexico voters that had been commissioned by the Thornburg Foundation and the Water Foundation.

“In late 2021, Research and Polling, Inc., conducted 706 phone interviews of registered voters from a representative cross-section of rural, suburban, and urban parts of [New Mexico].” The voters were asked to name the state’s top problems. Very few mentioned water. They were then asked, ‘what about water?’ A vast majority agreed that water is a major New Mexico problem and requires urgent attention because “drought and lack of water supplies threaten our way of life in New Mexico.”  

The scholars asked the same questions of the officials they met in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.None of the officials named water as a major New Mexico problem, yet all agreed, after being reminded by the second question, that it is. All said they didn’t know much about water and that someone else was working on it.  

The Argentine scholars worked hard to understand the water problems we face in the Middle Rio Grande. Initially, they recommended economic approaches, including escalating charges for water and economic disincentives for excessive uses.  As they began to understand New Mexican’s deep cultural water values and the conflicts between those values and water as a market commodity, they changed their focus to education and incentives. Their campaign slogan captures this focus: “Water is Life!  Do your Part.” 

The Water Advocates provided the Argentine scholar’s case study recommendations and the Peace Engineering framing to Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) water planning staff. We hope ISC will consider the perspective of brilliant young Latino scholars–who looked at our systemic problems with fresh eyes and trained policy-oriented minds, unencumbered by our biases—as the ISC puts in place the rules and guidelines for the new statewide regional and community water resilience planning program. 

Enforcement against illegal water uses was the only punitive approach the scholars recommended. They couldn’t believe that in New Mexico, the most arid of the 50 states, we do nothing about consistent illegal water use. They believe that is not rational. Of course, they are correct.  

We will do our part, together, asking the New Mexico Legislature, our Governor, and our state water management agencies to step up and do theirs. In the words of the Argentineans, our governments’ part is to “measure and rule this problem.” Progress is incremental. Let’s work together to respectfully demand the 2024 Legislature authorize and fund the next, substantive increments.