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Shortage Sharing

Elephant-Butte-Reservoir-Aug-2022-38

New Mexico Drought, Aridification & Desertification

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Protecting Water, Farms, and Communities:

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

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

Is New Mexico Really in a Drought?

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

Defining Drought: A Temporary Water Shortage

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

When Drought Becomes Aridification

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

Desertification: A Long-Term Climate Threat

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

Climate Warming as the Driving Force

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

Scientific Evidence for Climate Change

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

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

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

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

The Role of Atmospheric Circulation (Hadley Cells)

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

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

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

What Desertification Means for New Mexico

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

Water Resource Challenges in the Middle Rio Grande Valley

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

Acequia Traditions and Shortage Sharing

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

Conclusion: Preparing for a Drier Future

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

People at round tables in discussion

Why Should You Plan for Water?

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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. 

And this means you.  Agua es vida.  Do your part!  

Email the Water Advocates today to say you would like to participate!


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.

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Water Rights … and Water Wrongs

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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.