Explore the critical role of groundwater in New Mexico’s water supply, including the challenges of declining water tables and the need for responsible management.
New Mexico is standing at the edge of a crisis that many cannot see—because it lies beneath our feet. Groundwater, our state’s most vital and fragile water source, is vanishing faster than it can be replenished. In Eastern New Mexico, this crisis is no longer a distant threat, because Eastern New Mexico is almost out of water. The threat is here. It is now.
For those of us working in land and water conservation, especially in the Ogallala Aquifer region, the warning signs have been flashing red for years. The Ogallala Aquifer—one of the largest in the world—underlies eight states and provides life-sustaining water for agriculture, communities, and military installations. But it is a finite, non-renewable resource. In Eastern New Mexico, we are draining it. It’s irreplaceable; the consequences are mounting.
More than 95% of our local groundwater is used for irrigation farming. But irrigation isn’t just “watering crops.” It is water-intensive, industrial-scale pumping that, year after year, removes vast volumes of groundwater from ancient paleochannels—buried drainage channels carved before the aquifer was formed. Because they are the deepest parts of the Ogallala Aquifer, paleochannels hold the last accessible groundwater in the region.
Center-pivot irrigation Curry County Ranch, now abandoned. Photo: Danny Fish
In fact, from 2018 to 2023 alone, we lost more than 20% of the remaining groundwater in the paleochannel region northwest of Cannon Air Force Base.
That loss isn’t just data—it’s a large permanent loss of the remaining water supply.
For every year irrigation farming continues in the paleochannel, we lose the equivalent of four years of future groundwater availability for our communities’ future. At this pace, the aquifer will be functionally depleted over most of the Eastern New Mexico High Plains region by 2028. The 2017 report Lifetime Projections of the High Plains Aquifer in Eastern New Mexico by New Mexico Tech geologists Geoff Rawling and Alex Rinehart warned us—loud and clear—that only about 10 years of water remained for agricultural use in Curry and Roosevelt Counties. We’re nearly there.
Despite its importance, groundwater is too often treated as invisible or secondary—governed inconsistently, measured incompletely, and managed with outdated frameworks.
Emptying the huge but finite Ogallala aquifer is the legacy of policies that reward extraction over conservation, like an economy based on mining. We learned the finite limits of Ogallala Aquifer groundwater and then did nothing to reduce its rapid and thorough depletion. Supplemental wells were authorized and drilled to restore production volumes as the saturated groundwater zone thinned. High commodity prices incentivized water-intensive crops. Meanwhile, severe sustained drought accelerated groundwater pumping to replace the absent precipitation. Climate change increased evapotranspiration.
Statewide, many communities face similar concerns. Groundwater supports not only agriculture, but drinking water systems, ecosystems, and industrial sectors across New Mexico. Yet despite its importance, groundwater is too often treated as invisible or secondary—governed inconsistently, measured incompletely, and managed with outdated frameworks.
But it’s not too late—if we act decisively and collaboratively.
And to lead, we must understand the full picture.
That begins by recognizing that groundwater is infrastructure. It may not be visible like a road or a dam, but it functions as the underlying support system for our economy, food supply, ecosystems, and national defense. Without it, communities cannot survive, agriculture cannot function, and our military readiness is compromised.
Recognize that groundwater is neglected infrastructure. Without it, communities cannot survive
We don’t think twice about maintaining highways or reinforcing bridges—yet we often overlook the aquifers beneath us that make everyday life in New Mexico possible. Groundwater storage and availability should be treated with the same level of urgency and investment as any other critical asset. Groundwater expert Maurice Hall puts it plainly: we must stop treating groundwater as a passive byproduct of weather and start managing it as the lifeline it is.
That’s why we’re honored to feature Maurice in this month’s Water Advocates speaker series. His upcoming workshop—“Groundwater as Essential Infrastructure”—invites us to rethink how we view, manage, and protect this hidden but essential resource. He’ll explore why New Mexico depends more heavily on groundwater than any other state and why proactive management has been the exception—not the rule.
Join us June 19 from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. for this important conversation.
The water beneath our feet is not just a resource—it’s the infrastructure of survival
Maurice will also share how groundwater governance is evolving across the West, offering insight into new models of aquifer stewardship, state policy, and collaborative action. Whether you’re a producer, policymaker, planner, or community leader, this session will open your eyes to what’s possible when we begin to treat groundwater not as an afterthought, but as a foundation for the future.
Bring your questions. Bring your ideas. Bring your commitment. Because the water beneath our feet is not just a resource—it’s the infrastructure of survival, and it’s time we start treating it that way.
Dr. Ladona Clayton is Executive Director of the Ogallala Land & Water Conservancy and a NM Water Advocates board member and volunteer. Ladona is leading water conservation efforts in Curry County in an official collaboration that includes Clovis, Curry County, Cannon Air Force Base, and local irrigators.
New Mexico faces a growing water crisis, driven by climate change and overuse. Without swift action, water shortages could threaten our economy and way of life. Experts forecast that, within 50 years, our state will be 5-7 degrees hotter, with 25% less water.
Can those living in New Mexico successful save our existing and growing economies from some sort of future catastrophic collapses due to water supply shortages caused by climate change? Most do hope so, but action is needed very soon. It does not seem, however, that it is human nature to address pending crises before they become severe. For example, our state and local governments and communities are failing to address rapidly the present and ongoing realities of water supply overuse along the Rio Grande and elsewhere across New Mexico.
Cities and towns along the Rio Grande see almost daily new developments, apartment complexes, housing communities, office buildings, and so on being constructed. This would seem to be in response to the significant ongoing efforts by the local governmental development agencies to attract new industries and business to the New Mexico, especially to the Albuquerque area. While we have sometimes heard, “If we are not growing, we are shrinking,” we also have heard, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” Not an outcome most would desire.
Current State and Local Efforts: Are They Enough?
Yes, our state’s Interstate Stream Commission and Office of the State Engineer are grinding away slowly in a start to address the state’s present and pending water supply crises, an effort that some may call “too little, too late.” Many reports have been produced and necessary actions are being talked about. It will take years to establish and implement the need actions, perhaps too slow and too late for the magnitude of changes coming regardless of whether we act or not. But it is important to acknowledge that these efforts by our state’s agencies are severely constrained by major limitations caused the failure to the NM legislation to recognize the severity of the growing water supply crises and their failing to provide needed funding to rapidly produce needed management changes. So, will a better late than never water management update be adequate? Time will tell.
How Did We Get Here? The Prior Appropriation Doctrine
How did we get here? States west of the 100th meridian, including NM, generally have long managed surface water supplies, especially along rivers, using the prior appropriation doctrine. This gives to whoever first started depleting surface water for “beneficial uses” the right to divert the same defined volumes of surface water from that source for ever. Historically, this meant diverting surface water for agricultural uses, as water for domestic or other uses tended to be relatively minimal, even insignificant, in comparison. This system is also sometimes called, “first in right, first in use.”
A water right is the right to use water, not the right to own water. Under the NM Constitution (Article 16), all water in NM belongs to the public, that is, the State, and is subject to appropriation by beneficial use. Those with the most senior water rights include native tribes, pueblos, Spanish land grants, and other territorial water users established prior to the 1907 Water Code. Senior water rights users can continue to use the permitted quantity of water annually for their beneficial uses into the undefined future, if the water source can supply that quantity. Successive users who then have more junior water rights can take any remaining surface water from that source for their own beneficial use, but only so long that they do not impinge on the rights of the more senior users. At least that that is the way it was supposed to work.
The Reality of Over-Appropriation and Overuse
How well does it work? It seems, less than optimally. According to a report from the Western Water Network, in the 1880s the Rio Grande water “was fully appropriated for irrigation.” Then the 1889 drought cycle “aggravated problems of over appropriation [emphasis added] in the Upper Rio Grande.” In that report “Upper Rio Grande” means the river upstream from just south of El Paso, Texas, to the river’s headwaters in Colorado. Consider then with over appropriation, that is “overuse,” of the Upper Rio Grande occurring in 1889, how is use of the Rio Grande water not considerably stretched thinner today? Consider this now especially when facing the region’s diminishing annual water supply and warming.
Is the 1880s Water Management System Still Appropriate?
Here it is important to question how the water management system established in the late 1800s for New Mexico’s agriculture and mining dominated economy remains appropriate for water management in the 2020s and beyond. Under the 1880s system of water management, only those having water rights permits for specific surface water sources may divert water from those sources. As such, whenever a surface water supply shortage might occur for a source, access to the surface water can be limited to those holding the oldest or most senior water rights or permits. Potential harm can result affecting others with more junior rights who also depend on that water source.
Under that 1880s system, water rights holders, either senior or junior, can also potentially lose their permitted water rights through non-use of their permitted beneficial use, for example, by stopping to farm. Often too, what can happen in NM and in most western states, water rights permit holders can sell their water rights separate from the land. This is a common approach for how municipal or industrial users can acquire needed surface water supplies. However, for existing owners of pre- or post-1907 water rights permits to change their permitted uses, they must apply for that change to the NM State Engineer. Surface water rights of individual irrigators in federally established irrigation and conservancy districts cannot be sold for use outside the district by communities and industry.
Active Water Resource Management (AWRM) – A Modern Attempt
The concept of limiting overuse of water by agreement was adopted for Pecos River Compact compliance purposes by the 2001 Legislature when it codified the agreement negotiated between Carlsbad area and Roswell area surface and groundwater users. The 2003 Legislature passed a law that directed the State Engineer to administer water rights in the absence of a completed adjudication based on the best information available. This new law, authorized the State Engineer to issue rules for priority administration and rules for expedited water marketing and leasing based on appropriate hydrological models. This law requires that administration not interfere with adjudications, not impair water rights any more than necessary to meet downstream obligations and must not increase depletions. The legislation exempted acequias and community ditches. It required that rules for marketing and leasing water be consistent with current law governing changes of point of diversion, place of use, and purpose of use of water rights. The legislation was signed by the governor and became New Mexico law at §72-2-9.1. NMSA 1978.
Called Active Water Resource Management (AWRM), it broadened and formalized the Office of the State Engineer abilities to manage the state’s waters. Under the resulting new regulations, stream-system based district water masters were designated and directed to employ hydrology monitoring of water use with district-specific rules to administer and protect water rights. During times of water supply shortages, several administrative options were implemented to address user needs. These include direct flow administrationwhere water can be delivered only to those users having highest priority water rights. Storage water administration can be used to manage the distribution of storage water to those having water rights to these waters, but not to those having only an administrable water right to native stream flows. Alternative administration can be used to file a plan with the Office of State Engineer for a water use agreement between junior user(s) facing a cutoff and senior water right owner(s) who can share water not planned for use with the junior user(s). Such arrangements are called shortage sharing.
Groundwater Depletion – A Growing Concern
During those times of surface water supply shortfalls in NM and elsewhere across the West, groundwater is typically pumped and used to supplement water supply requirements. Groundwater also is used when no reasonable access to surface water exists, for example, for rural homes or agricultural production. Historically, groundwater use has not been regulated or otherwise controlled. This has increasingly led to the depletion of groundwater, as the communities of east New Mexico are now experiencing as the Ogallala Aquifer is drained by agricultural pumping without regard to the need for communities to maintain a secure water supply for domestic and non-agricultural economic activity.
It is important to emphasize that surface water commonly is connected to the underlying groundwater. The connection can be direct and strong or less direct but with a longer-term impact. As such, unregulated pumping of groundwater from an aquifer interconnected with a river reduces river flows. In addition, groundwater pumping creates empty space in the pores formerly filled with the extracted water. In some places and at some times the weight of overlying soil and whatever is on the surface causes compaction of the aquifer. This leads to the formation of sink holes and overall ground surface settling, called surface subsidence. Areas of northeastern Albuquerque, for example, are included among those potentially susceptible to future pumping induced subsidence.
Differences Between Western and Eastern Water Management
In contrast to practices in the western US, most eastern states mange water under the riparian doctrine. This doctrine allows water use by the owners of the land adjacent to the water. Riparian rights cannot lose their rights for non-use, as is possible for those under the prior appropriation doctrine. Some western landowners think they have rights to water flowing by their land or underneath it, but that legal luxury is not valid in the western US as water must flow past to downstream senior water right owners.
The Challenge of Managing Wet Water for Multiple Needs
It has been emphasized here that the water management system of prior appropriation used in NM and the West comes from the agrarian dominated economies of the late 1800s. Unfortunately for that system, about 150 years ago there was also an “Industrial Revolution” that, like COVID, started to significantly spread across the world, changing the population size and economic base of many communities. Yet, across most of the West water is still managed as being an agrarian water-rights dominated economy, those having water rights from 100+ years ago get water first. But today NM needs to manage wet water from its various sources to deliver water for multiple user needs.
Of note here, a State water expert recently and perhaps surprisingly commented privately, “NM has plenty of water,” then, added, “it just goes to agriculture.” In fact, the ISC “Water in New Mexico” handout shows that 76 percent of the state’s water is diverted or pumped for irrigated agriculture. That, coupled with NM’s historical water-rights base management system is, perhaps, our state’s main obstruction to wet water management for today’s changing water supplies and population needs under climate warming.
The Need for Modern Water Management Approaches
NM’s water management approach needs to be updated for modern climate-warming times. NM must start managing physical wet water rather than focus almost entirely on administration of paper water, that is water rights and groundwater pumping permits. In the end, municipal populations and economies, family food farms, home food gardens, and, certainly, Hatch chile farms need water. If economic municipal economic growth is going to continue then wet water management needs to prevail over water rights management. If that is to happen, remaining family-owned senior, land grant, and tribal water rights will require special consideration. Likely too, in the long-term, some or many junior water rights holders may require significant shorting or eliminating.
Conclusion: Wet Water Management for the Future
Until NM changes to an emphasis on managing wet water over paper water, we may be left with two extreme inconvenient choices in the years to come: (1) some or most years with considerably less or zero water for domestic, municipal, industrial, and agricultural uses, particularly for those agricultural users with newer, post-1907 water rights; or (2) an increasingly dry or even desertified municipal and industrial economies with increasing urban abandonment.
Land subsidence and recovery in the Albuquerque Basin, New Mexico, 1993–2014. Driscoll, J.M., and Brandt, J.T., 2017,: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2017–5057, 31 p.https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20175057
MainStream New Mexico. https://mainstreamnm.org/data-and-reports/ (This site provides links to many reports produced by various state organization on the state’s upcoming water crisis.)
The Upper Rio Grande – A Guide to Decision Making. S.J. Shupe and J. Folk-Williams. 1988. Western Network. (This report is difficult to find but provides considerable insight on the region’s water histories plus planning and management needs. This organization has produced other similar reports for water resources across the West.)
At a momentous hearing on April 5, 2024, more than 100 community members from Catron County crowded the court room and hallways of the Seventh Judicial District court in Reserve to hear oral argument on the Augustin Plains Ranch LLC’s continuing and relentless requests to mine and hoard 54,000 acre-feet of water a year from the arid San Augustin Plains. District Court Judge Roscoe Woods heard arguments from Augustin Plains Ranch (APR) and the many allied parties opposing the transfer including the State Engineer Water Rights Division, the Catron County Commission, the Helen Hand Ranch, and two groups of area residents including the Community Protestants group, represented by NM Environmental Law Center. Agreeing that the Ranch’s request to transfer this groundwater was pure speculation, Judge Woods ruled from the bench in favor of denying the transfer as contrary to NM law on beneficial use.
The district court granted the State Engineer’s Motion for Summary Judgment, ultimately preventing APR from pumping water from 30 proposed wells, which APR hoped to pipe upstate to municipalities north of Socorro such as Los Lunas and Belén. The San Augustin Plains basin is a closed groundwater basin meaning it has no perennial water source to recharge the basin. The groundwater in the basin is considered fossil water with calculations that the water is 9,000 to 11,000 years old. It is unconscionable to think that the water could be mined and delivered via pipeline to municipalities to dangle it in front of developers for unsustainable growth in our state, which is already in a water crisis.
Since 2007, NMELC has fought alongside Catron County residents against APR’s determination to hoard the fossil groundwater and to protect the water which residents rely on for their homes, gardens and livestock. This marks a major win for water, people and ecosystems. The decision will be precedential for the State Engineer in determining when applications to transfer water are speculative and the applicants do not have an imperative need for the water they seek. The long course of the APR litigation has included two speculative, nearly identical applications from APR to appropriate groundwater and multiple appeals from the State Engineer’s decisions denying these applications to both the district court and the New Mexico Court of Appeals. It is our hope that APR will finally take NO! for an answer. APR will have 30 days after the entry of a written order from the April 5 hearing to appeal the decision to the Court of Appeals. No written order has been entered to date.
The Village of Los Lunas Councilors voted 3:2 to double the amount of groundwater this California corporation pumps from Village well to sell in plastic bottles. They authorized the company’s water extraction to double, to 195 million gallons per year. The approval for more water taking was allowed despite the presentation of Village water consultants, Lee Wilson and Associations, at the meeting, that Niagara Bottling had run over its allotted amount of water usage almost every month since it began in 2017.
“Water belongs to the people. Period. It is not for corporate profit,” said Alejandria Lyons, who grew up in Valencia County and has a masters degree in community planning. “This valley was created on subsistence farming, on the cultures, on Isleta Pueblo specifically, who have not been able to have a say on this [Niagra] expansion issue,” Lyons spoke at the recent rally calling attention to the recent vote by Los Lunas village council giving the green light for Niagara Bottling expansion to take more water for bottling in plastic bottles from the Rio Grande Basin.
Mayor Charles Griego’s surprising announcement at the February 8 meeting,, “We are not… Clearly NOT going to be opening this up for any public comment,” which shut down all public comment, still resonates among the community. Griego’s undemocratic move has ignited a firestorm of criticism.
Mayor Griego and Councilors Ortiz and Runyon supported the expansion, while Councilors Romero and Munoz opposed it. Despite opposition from Pueblo of Isleta leadership and the Mayors of Peralta and Bosque Farms, community leaders were not allowed to speak at the meeting.
In an interview on DPVC Radio, Mayor of Peralta, Byran Olguin said, ‘What really frustrates me is not one word was said about the farmers in this Middle Rio Grande Valley and how they are going to be impacted.’
Following the vote, Valencia Water Watchers organized a rally where residents gathered at Los Lunas Memorial Park, vowing to continue the fight against what they perceive as corporate overreach at the expense of the community’s water resources. The gathering served as a rallying cry for those committed to protecting their water rights from exploitation for corporate gain.
NM Acequia Association came bringing signs that read, “Agua es Vida” and brightly painted shovels painted with the patron saint of the acequias, San Ysidro, which they bring out when there are times of drought. Dabi Garcia said, “This is a time when our community is under threat.” He then sang a traditional acequia song, keeping the beat on the shovel handle. YUCCA member Zypher Jaramillo, from the Pueblo of Isleta said, “As Pueblo People our lifeways are inextricably connected. Water is not a resource but a relative and needs to be protected.”
Sweetwater is better than Badwater. As a grade school kid living ½ block from the main US highway from El Paso to Los Angeles as Interstate 10 was being built to bypass Deming, I remember being curious about places named Badwater or Sweetwater, sour water wash and gypsum draw. Google Maps shows three Sweetwater Streets in Albuquerque and Santa Fe today. Many places are named that across the West. Sweetwater is a generic goods and services brand, too.
The sweet waters of New Mexico are necessary for all life in our beloved state, in all our home places, our querencias. An acerbic senior ISC water engineer told me 25 years ago that we know where New Mexico’s water is. It is where we live, irrigate, water livestock, hunt and fish, and enjoy our heritage. He didn’t need to say “sweetwater.”
New Mexico’s sweetwater overuse and increasing scarcity not a State of New Mexico priority. New Mexico is in a water crisis. It is a crisis that begs for our actions this year, not next, which is simply not the way New Mexico’s elected leaders behave because they do not know. The crisis will be realized gradually on the human time scale of years and decades. Intentional informed action today will make tomorrow as good as it can be. Continued neglect will destroy New Mexico’s future, as we watch 40 years of water stewardship neglect continuing with little concern from the top.
Water can’t wait. Water scarcity is increasing. Pumps are everywhere without any control of pumping other than the permit to drill them. Surface water right owners do not have enough, and are granted state permits to pump out-of-sight, out-of-mind groundwater that is always there, accelerating groundwater overuse.
The only realistic opportunity to meet our needs and create a livable New Mexico with water for future generations of New Mexicans is much better stewardship of our remaining sweetwater. Someone reminded me of an adage that could have come from a southern NM uncle: if you are digging a hole and begin to wonder if you can get out or it will cave in on you, stop digging.
Why are we digging until all we have left is badwater?
New Mexico is pumping irreplaceable groundwater and has been at it for a century without an eye to the future. This summer, Portales ran out of water. Through neglect, that historic New Mexico community, home to Eastern New Mexico University, the pride of many east-side legislators, ran out of water.
What will the City fathers and the State do to keep Portales from becoming a ghost town, like others across New Mexico that dried up and blew away after exhausting resources? Where has the water gone, the scarcity of which threatens Portales’ very survival? Not for the greater good or the public welfare of the region, or of the State.
Public welfare of the state is the measure of state law for discretionary state engineer decisions. Public welfare of the region is a new legal term created by the House Floor Amendment prior to the 2023 Legislature’s unanimous approval of the Water Security Planning Act. We are the state most dependent on groundwater. We are mining it out, and when it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Since water is life, and without water, there is nothing, so will we. What is the public welfare of the state, and the public welfare of the region, in that light?
Formerly gushing wells are dribbling and well drillers can’t begin to meet the burgeoning demand for new and replacement wells. We are blowing off Rio Grande interstate water sharing agreements despite the clear trend toward a brand new decade-long lawsuit brought by the Texas. How much longer will we chase the water?
The New Mexico default answer is, until the rivers are all sand and the aquifers are empty. By their actions, our elected leaders show that water security, which requires stopping grossly unsustainable and low benefit water depletions, is not on their minds.
Badwater investment. Planned badwater treatment for use may be part of a future vetted water resources management portfolio but has no place in a wise water management strategy that begins with the end in mind, a livable future for New Mexicans throughout our state. And puts first things first.
Tremendous opportunity costs. Meanwhile, none seemed to recognize the dispute between the Legislature and the Governor was blocking state funding for State water agency work essential to New Mexico’s survival. This essential, foundation work would, after sufficient investment, tell us how much groundwater we have left and how fast we are using it up. We will wait to rev that effort up until a future day when we have more money? What?
Opportunity cost examples. No funding was provided for expanding the groundwater science staff at the NM Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources nor drilling aquifer characterization monitoring wells to tell us how much water we have left, and the years remaining. New Mexicans deserve to know that.
The Governor proposed a few large appropriations of federal funds for water infrastructure, like drilling the monitoring wells and for an Indian Water Rights Settlement Fund. None survived the 2024 Legislature. One casualty was $4.5 million in federal ARPA funding allocated to begin a planned 10-year program to systematically drill and equip aquifer research and monitoring wells.
Failing to fund accelerated implementation of the 2019 Water Data Act is in my view the most egregious failure of the Executive and the Legislature to put first things first. The data required for all state funded regional water planning must come from full implementation of the NM Water Data Initiative. §72-14A-4 (7) NMSA 1978
Problems with the Legislature. Concurrently, Legislative Finance Committee staff reportedly were justifying not funding implementation of the 2023 Water Security Planning Act with their own internal longstanding misinformation blaming the ISC and regional water planners for producing shelf reports, shamelessly or without knowledge that shelf reports were exactly what was authorized by the “not-planning, not intended for implementation” statute passed in 1987.
The 2023 Water Security Planning Act replaced the narrow, useless 1987 statute. The Legislature’s appropriators again did not adequately funding implementation of that planning law passed unanimously last year commensurate with the urgent need. Their staff based this neglect on irrelevant uninformed criticism of the law that was. Who can explain this? I can. They simply don’t know what they don’t know about New Mexico’s water crisis.
Problems with the Executive. After recovering from my shock and anger witnessing the Senate Conservation Committee hearing of “dummy bill” SB294 approximately 50 hours before the 2024 Legislature ended, I asked myself if I was hearing misinformation or disinformation.
The Executive’s principal spokespersons for the badwater, so-called strategic water supply during the session, that emerged at the 11th hour as SB294, are knowledgeable, sophisticated professionals, one a professional engineer, the other a lawyer. Their facts and inferences were not reasonable or true, from my perspective. Their arguments were not rational. Did they intend harm through disruptive out-in-front support for an ocean idea imported to the high desert withholding all judgment as to feasibility and priority? Intention to harm is the criterion distinguishing disinformation from misinformation. Regardless, the initiative they were leading as the faces of the Executive created harm.
Produced water treatment was removed from the SB294 before introduction. The Governor put it back. Follow the money. Our state’s reins are held by oil and gas.
Parallel of the Gila Diversion Project modus operandi. The Executive pitch to date for the Governor’s badwater project shares characteristics with the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission’s wasteful attempt to develop the known-to-be-infeasible Gila Diversion Project from 2004 to 2020. The parallels I see:
Throw money at the problem while avoiding a feasibility study
Facts are not favorable so are secret or immaterial
Disinformationpaints a fantasy word picture of an unfeasible outcome
Opacity hides the fatal flaws of the proposed project, its data, technology, costs, benefits, beneficiaries, and the self-serving participation of key players
Known Unknowns. I admired Senator Harold Pope, Jr.’s thoughtful critique of the dummy badwater project bill SB294 at the Senate Conservation Committee hearing about 50 hours before the session ended. The legislature’s streamed video recording is available here. Senator Pope observed we need answers to the many known unknowns about the project before it is fully funded.
Everything is unknown, including the basic feasibility and any assurance this project will be assessed to any reasonable public standard. It is ironic that the law imposes stringent proper planning, vetting and prioritization requirements on anything proposed by a regional water planning entity, but the same doesn’t apply to the so-called strategic water supply.
We can see the opportunity costs as described above. We can’t assess unintended consequences of the proposal because nothing is known.
South American public policy scholars. My thinking went back to the cohort of South American Fulbright Scholars I was privileged to work with at the University of New Mexico in June 2023. They loved getting to know New Mexico and learning about the Middle Rio Grande and our water. Water policy is not something they had considered previously because their federal government manages their country’s water resources and uses with more equity, appropriate prioritization, and realism.
After three weeks at UNM with international academic scholars and Peace Engineering leaders, the scholars’ water policy case study diagnosis and remedy get right to the point. Regular type is theirs; italicized is mine.
Research continues to find problems and propose solutions that don’t reach the people
New Mexico legislators are people.
Water is a community-problem. Community problems require community-driven solutions.
The only way to generate sustainable solutions is to understand water as a collective action problem and empower the people to take action
What concerns me most is that consequences on New Mexico of the fundamental hydrologic and climate reality we face are an unknown, unknown to most NM legislators
When Senator Pope talked about the known unknowns of a not-even-located desal or oilfield toxic wastewater treatment for reuse plant or any high tech, high energy required solutions, my mind went to the highly inconvenient truths of our hydrologic and climate reality that most NM Legislators do not know, or even know that they don’t know.
The Fulbright Scholars participated in meetings with VIPs, including local and state elected officials, the University of New Mexico Global Studies program had previously arranged. One aspect of New Mexico’s water problem is social, a public lack of awareness of the water crisis known to water science but unknown and unconsidered by almost all. A late 2021 Thornburg Foundation/Water Foundation-sponsored water attitudes poll questioned a cross section of urban, suburban, and rural New Mexico voters across New Mexico.
I included the poll interpretation and data in the scholars initial Middle Rio Grande case study orientation and suggested they consider using that approach in their prearranged meetings. They asked the VIPs about New Mexico’s most important problems. None volunteered that water is a most important problem. The scholars asked, what about water? All VIPs agreed it was important. None knew much about it. Most indicated someone else is working on it.
The poll report explains that was the public reaction to the pollster. But once asked what about water, look what they said:
The truth is that many scientists and state staffers are working on water without adequate resources in this time of crisis but huge budget surplus. Few lawmakers are. No state appropriators are commensurate with the crisis. The Governor is a little in, mostly out,
Unless addressed, New Mexico water problems are terminal across New Mexico. If our people and our leaders don’t learn, understand what we must face and deal with, we are going to evaporate our people and economy.
I remember a meeting not that long ago with David Abbey, the legislative key financial staffer who presided at the right hand of Senator John Arthur Smith. This was around 2019, when the Water Advocates tried to get regional water planning reform legislation passed.
Abbey said New Mexico’s water problems are chronic. What I argued, and he would not accept, was that while water is indeed a chronic problem, hydrologic reality is catching up with us and severe global warming has overtaken us. What may appear chronic to a budget expert with little knowledge of water is actually a worsening full-blown crisis enveloping us right now. Failure to recognize the crisis and act to mitigate it and adapt has consequences. Just look around at the scarcity emerging. This is not drought. This is permanent.
Phil King recently observed that as a species, humans have failed miserably for four decades to ignore the warnings of expert scientists that we must mitigate greenhouse gasses. Similarly, now we have no choice but to adapt to having much less water now or see our descendants as climate refugees. When we overpump our groundwater, we are eating our seed corn.
Sweetwater Bright Spots to Close.
Dr. Phil King also observes opportunities for effective action abound. We can do this. We have to start. We have to go big. We love New Mexico and its people. We love our home places. We will take action.
State Engineer Mike Hamman in 2024 broke the Governor’s and Legislature’s essential lock on agency staff capacity. He won 27 of the 31 new positions he openly requested, all associated with general categories of endeavor.
The Legislature funded priorities and projects of New Mexico’s environmental values community represented by the Water Task Force workgroup addressing river stewardship and watershed health but not aquifer health. The Legislature also funded communities and community infrastructure.
Two Legislators provided allocations of their junior money to water. Senator McKenna allocated $200,000 to the State Engineer to fund OSE implementation of the 2019 Water Data Act. Rep. Marian Mathews allocated $160,000 for implementation of the 2023 Water Security Planning Act, the only appropriations by the Legislature for those named purposes. Thank you to Senator McKenna and to Rep. Marian Mathews.
The NM Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources at NM Tech received half of what the New Mexico Department of Higher Education requested to provide reliable actionable data and information for New Mexico’s more resilient water future. Emerita Director Nelia Dunbar, also a NM Water Ambassador, reported last week the NMBGMR would fully fund the water education program for Legislators. The Bureau of Geology will ask again in 2025 for aquifer monitoring and mapping staff and capital money to drill the wells to provide the data that will cause us to wake up and decide to act.
Now, to all our readers. Please! Write your Senator and your Representative and ask that they fully participate in all the Water Education for Legislators programs during the 2024 Interim. We must change course or perish. They Governor and Legislators need to learn about our water crisis and provide resources to the water agencies and the people to find the transformative change New Mexico’s survival requires.
The Issue – Who gets water when there isn’t enough? At a simplified level, the current New Mexico “Priority Administration” regulations, if enforced when there isn’t enough water, would provide much of the water to irrigators first, leaving very thirsty cities and towns. And with desperately thirsty cities and towns, the New Mexico economy would wither, taking down those irrigators as well as virtually everyone else.
New Mexico law provides a workaround. It allows for a community of neighbors on a common water source to create an agreement on how to “Alternatively Administer” water. If done well, such agreements could equitably balance the impact of water shortfalls and minimize the pain to the overall community.
An Opportunity –The 2023 New Mexico Legislature recognized the risks, and unanimously passed the Water Security Planning Act (WSPA, a.k.a. 72-14A-NMSA). While some encouragement would be helpful, the 2024 Legislature is poised to provide funding to vigorously implement the unanimous 2023 Act.
WSPA provides a formal guide for regions of the state and their included communities to come together and develop programs and policies (agreements) to share water equitably, consistent with physical reality.
The Act concurrently provides a mechanism for the regions and their communities to identify current and future problems, to identify needed infrastructure projects, evaluate and prioritize such solutions, and then, with the state’s help, seek funding to implement the projects.
The Goal – Together, the programs, policies and projects will form a plan to deal with regional water in the future. To work effectively and to provide equitable results, the planning process must involve proper consideration of input from all stakeholders – at the regional level to meet region-wide constraints, and at the community level for addressing localized problems.
A Prime Case – Let’s consider the Middle Rio Grande Region (from the Los Alamos Highway to Elephant Butte Reservoir). That area encompasses a big fraction of the state’s population and its economy. The Middle Rio Grande has an urgent problem – risk of expensive Compact violation. Accordingly, we want to start the planning effort promptly, in parallel with the state’s rule-making process.
We all draw from the same water source: the Rio Grande and the aquifer that lies under the river, which in turn are fed only by precipitation (rain or snow). That precipitation is highly variable.
Over the past decade or so, the Region has been regularly using more water than it is entitled to use. If unabated, the rapidly accruing debit (see figure on following page) will almost surely lead to lawsuits, astronomical taxpayer costs, and potentially, federal Supreme Court control over New Mexico water. And with a warming climate, more of the incoming surface water will evaporate leaving even less for use, which will drive groundwater users to increase their impact on the already-damaged aquifers.
We (virtually all of us) have become spoiled, accustomed to having and using plenty of water. You might remember that the last two decades of the 20th century were the wettest in 2000 years, but the past two decades have been among the driest. And significant further climate-based reduction is projected.
What’s Coming? – With grant funding, state concurrence, and nationally recognized coordinators, the Middle Rio Grande Water Advocates are convening a collaborative, broad, multi-stakeholder process to establish the well-balanced regional water resilience planning Entity that WSPA calls for. That Entity will conduct a multi-year, publicly driven and scientifically based water planning process leading to a consensus plan for program and policy agreements along with evaluated and prioritized infrastructure projects ready for legislative and other implementation funding.
For the MRG to have a viable water and economic future under changed climates, we can’t continue in a siloed race to the bottom. All interests must be represented, collaboratively participate, and be duly respectfully heard. The process must keep water at the forefront and develop a consensus on the best solutions going forward.
Bob Wessely has worked with and led the Water Assembly, now Water Advocates, for twenty-five years. Partnering with the Middle Rio Grande Council of Governments, the Assembly coordinated the planning process that resulted in the 2004 MRG Regional Water Plan.
In Bob’s previous 30-year career, he co-founded and served as Technical Director of SciSo, Inc., an Albuquerque software system engineering and management consulting firm supporting diverse industries nationwide. Although Bob holds a PhD in Theoretical, Solid-State Physics, at heart he is a systems engineer who enjoys finding solutions for problems important to NM and its communities, especially water.
While the rules about them are extremely complicated, “water rights” are simply your permission slip from the State to use water, if you can find it (often a big “if”). Water rights are often called “paper water.” Separate and distinct from paper water are collections of dihydrogen oxide molecules (H2O). Such collections are affectionately known as “wet water.” All too often, people conflate paper water and wet water. The results can be seriously misleading or worse.
Wet water can be neither created nor destroyed (with very minor exceptions). But it can change form, from solid (ice melting) to liquid to gas (evaporating), and back. Most water users deal with the liquid form. It comes to us as precipitation, where the gaseous form of water condenses into liquid or solid form as rain or snow. And then it migrates: coalesces into streams/rivers, seeps into the ground, and/or evaporates back into gas. We obtain wet water for use by diverting it from streams/rivers (“surface water”) or by pumping it out of the ground where seepage has accumulated either recently or over millennia (“groundwater”). In some places, pressure drives groundwater naturally to the surface as springs, where it becomes surface water.
Paper water (permission slips) has four attributes. They are (1) a maximum quantity of water; (2) a location or point of diversion from the stream/river/well; (3) a purpose and place of use; and (4) a priority date when water was first put to beneficial use in that place. When there is insufficient wet water in the stream/river for all of the water rights holders, New Mexico law allocates the limited water among permission holders. It says that the oldest priority date user (“most senior”) gets all of his/her water; the next oldest can draw up to his/her limit from what’s left over, and so on down the priority date chain until the entire stream/river is used up, regardless of their location along the stream/river. In that “strict priority administration” regime, the recent date water permission holders (“junior users”) may get no water at all. New Mexico law also allows an exception for permission holders on a stream/river system to enter into shortage-sharing agreements with a different plan of allocation (“alternative administration”). New Mexico law also allows permission slips to be bought, sold, leased, and/or moved, subject to State approval, except for domestic wells.
Water permission procedures were established long ago when almost all water use was surface water. In the mid-20th century, use of groundwater started becoming substantial. The state created a new form of paper water called “permits.” These were permissions to pump limited quantities of groundwater from a specific well for a particular purpose. Recognizing that substantial groundwater pumping would place a drain on the river stream systems, the state required groundwater permittees to purchase offsetting surface water rights, presumably maintaining the overall quantity of demand on water in the stream/river system at pre-groundwater historical levels. There are no similar constraints to preserve available groundwater. Anticipating minimal groundwater impacts, New Mexico law also provides an exception where domestic and livestock wells routinely are permitted without offsetting water rights. There are now 160,000 or more domestic wells, according to the Office of the State Engineer.
Paper and wet water have different availabilities. Between permits and water rights, New Mexico has developed far more permissions for use than there is – or ever was – wet water. New Mexico has no shortage of paper water (water rights or permits). However, wet water is another story. Surface wet water flows are highly variable, seasonally, annually, and across decades. For example, tree ring studies have shown that the last two decades of the 20th century were the wettest in 2000 years. The first two decades of the 21st century are among the driest. Climate studies project that New Mexico is facing another 25% reduction in surface water flows over the next 50 years (due to increased evaporation from higher temperatures). Groundwater studies (and dry wells) have shown that in many places within New Mexico, groundwater supplies accreted over thousands of years are dwindling toward extinction. Now and in the future, there are and will be serious water shortages across New Mexico.
Action is needed. Among other considerations, the state’s economic well-being depends upon a reliable wet water supply for individuals and businesses. Paper water cannot quench these thirsts. Strict priority administration cannot meet these dependencies either. For example, the cities have mostly junior water rights, but also the most New Mexicans. We must collaboratively develop shortage-sharing agreements that will equitably serve as alternative administration regimes for those times of significantly reduced supply of wet water lest our water and economic security suffer.
Opportunity presents itself. The 2023 Water Security Planning Act provides a medium for regional and community water planning. It encourages individuals and stakeholders to collaboratively design and prioritize actions to equitably adapt to much less water, thereby optimizing the communities’, the regions’, and the State’s future economic well-being within the water availability.
Bob Wessely has worked with and led the Water Assembly, now Water Advocates, for twenty-five years. Partnering with the Middle Rio Grande Council of Governments, the Assembly coordinated the planning process that resulted in the 2004 MRG Regional Water Plan.
In Bob’s previous 30-year career, he co-founded and served as Technical Director of SciSo, Inc., an Albuquerque software system engineering and management consulting firm supporting diverse industries nationwide. Although Bob holds a PhD in Theoretical, Solid-State Physics, at heart he is a systems engineer who enjoys finding solutions for problems important to NM and its communities, especially water.
