New Mexico is progressing steadily toward water bankruptcy, a condition scientists define as a persistent post-crisis state in which water withdrawals have exceeded renewable supplies for so long that critical water resources are depleted and a return to former conditions is irreversible, even at prohibitive cost.[1] New Mexico is experiencing major decreases in surface water supplies needed to meet present and future requirements of our people and economy. New Mexicans have reacted by increasingly pumping groundwater, accelerating depletion of this dwindling resource. Along the Rio Grande and other rivers, unsustainable groundwater pumping induces recharge from the river that diverts streamflow underground, depriving downstream water rights holders of their water.
Diminishing flows in the Rio Grande Isleta reach April 9, 2026. Photo by GeoSystems Analysis published by the Bureau of Reclamation.
New Mexico Is Spending Its Water Into Bankruptcy
Unfortunately, our population appears to be generally unaware this is occurring. Regrettably, our governor, the majority of our legislators, and almost all candidates for these offices in the upcoming elections doing little to help our population learn about the true water supply emergencies we face. State water agencies are understaffed and slow. They lack the executive direction and tools, such as water metering and modern data systems, that are required for workable water governance. Their leaders take direction from a Governor who prioritizes speculative new water schemes while neglecting the stewardship and managed conservation necessary for lawful distribution of shrinking water supplies.
After all, telling the plain truth New Mexico is in a water overuse and scarcity emergency would clash with the Governor’s and the economic development community’s priority of recruiting data centers and other high water use industry.
This clash resembles that found in other southwestern states, except for Texas. Last November, 70 percent of Texas voters said yes to commit $20 billion, a first and major step to help ensure their state’s population and industries have a reliable water supply.[2]
The Texas Legislature and Voters Choose a Better Path
As reported in the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Winter 2026 quarterly magazine, Solutions, the Texas voters passed Proposition 4, creating the largest water supply investment in Texas’ history, all funded by its existing sales tax.[3] This is a significant first step to fund the $150 billion estimate budget needed for Texas to address its coming and ongoing water supply requirements.
Our claim that “New Mexico is a better place to live than Texas” needs to be backed up with actions, because water makes our lives here possible. Without water, there is nothing.
Proposition 4 initially targets building new water supply systems and helping it patch aging water supply pipes that are now estimated to leak out 30 percent of Texas’ treated drinking water supply. It also targets developing and advancing innovative and cost-effective projects for wastewater reuse, agricultural water conservation, groundwater protection, wetlands restoration, and land conservation. Like New Mexico, the Texas projects also face challenges that include the lack of legal constraints on groundwater pumping and historical water right allocations.
Seeing what the citizens of Texas have accomplished — voting 70 percent in favor of a $20 billion first step toward water security — it is well past time to do something similar in New Mexico. Our claim that “New Mexico is a better place to live than Texas” needs to be backed up with actions, because water makes our lives here possible. Without water, there is nothing. Our overuse is badly damaging New Mexico children’s future.
New Mexicans do not have the option Texas voters exercised. In Texas, a two-thirds vote of their legislature placed Proposition 4 on the ballot — and 70% of Texas voters delivered. New Mexico’s legislature has not. Our governor, our legislature, and our water agencies hold powers that citizens cannot exercise for themselves, powers that are being sorely neglected. New Mexico Water Advocates urges our state’s leaders to act with the resolve Texas demonstrated. We urge every reader to demand it. As EDF says, “It’s not just about money…. It’s about finally recognizing that water is our most precious resource, and it is time to start acting like it.”
We Must Adapt to Stop Overdrawing New Mexico’s Water Future
Two Forces Behind New Mexico’s Driest Winter on Record
Our past winter had 70 and 80 degree temperatures in February and March. The southern Rocky Mountains had little snow that melted quite early. This has been the warmest winter in the state’s 130-plus years of record. These conditions have diminished and dried New Mexico’s rivers. Two simultaneous conditions have produced this. First, we have learned from scientific monitoring and modeling that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming at an apparently accelerating rate. Second, a La Niña pattern developed in the Pacific Ocean that pushed the prevailing east flow of the jet stream, with its carried storms, northward to the Pacific Northwest and east from there. That produced historically record-dry conditions to persist across New Mexico and the Southwest.
La Niña is the term for that part of a repeating cycle of cooling and warming of ocean waters in the east-central tropical Pacific that repeats every few years. La Niña patterns occur when the water is coolest, alternating with El Niño patterns that develop in the warmest years of this cycle. Historically, the global climate changes caused by La Niña conditions typically include reductions in rainfall across the Southwest during its traditional summer monsoon season. An El Niño can increase later summer and fall monsoons for the Southwest. Of major significance, an El Niño generally leads to significantly greater snow packs in the southern Rockies. Such changes also accompany increasing drought conditions for the northern Rockies and much of the Northwest, Midwest, and East.
Currently, climate monitoring and major climate models both indicate that a rare, record-breaking “super” El Niño is spreading eastward across the tropical Pacific Ocean toward South America. The Increasing ocean temperatures could push ocean temperatures three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above average. This ocean heating is projected to be larger than the previous record occurring during the super El Niño of 1886-88. That El Niño resulted in global crop failures and deaths of an estimated 50 million people due to drought and starvation. Such massive impacts are not expected to happen with this new super El Niño because our understanding of such effect has expanded, allowing for any such impacts to be better mitigated. That is not to say that regional droughts will not develop and related lesser magnitude human impacts will not result.
El Niño May Bring Temporary Relief, But Not a Solution
Seldom does a single wet season or two fully erase accumulated long-term water supply deficits.
Assuming El Niño persists for the next year or two and is not significantly disrupted by accelerating climate warming, and assuming the historical pattern of increased precipitation in the Southwest and snow packs in the southern Rocky Mountains holds, then the ongoing pattern of increased aridity across New Mexico and the Southwest could get a temporary reprieve. Forecasters warn, however, that seldom does a single wet season or two fully erase accumulated long-term water supply deficits.
Here, it is also important to remember that the Earth’s climate is also projected to continually warm. As such, we must continue to recognize that we in the Southwest are not ending a temporary drought. Nevertheless, we should expect that some folks will falsely claim “our water supply crisis is over.” Rains must not be allowed to dampen the growing political urgency around the fact that water uses across New Mexico substantially exceed the sustainable water supply.
New Mexico and the Southwest, as is also true for the global climate, are projected to be in an ongoing and perhaps never ending period of climate warming, with an increasing long-term, gradual shift of our region to a drier climate (i.e., increased aridification or even desertification, as we have discussed previously). In fact, this 2026 El Nino is projected to bump global temperatures up by three degrees Fahrenheit. Also remember, as this El Niño warming part of the southern Pacific cycle ends the next cooling part of the La Niña cycle will return drying conditions to our region.
We Must Act Before the Window Closes
We must use this time wisely to better focus and activate urgently needed water supply management for New Mexico and the Middle Rio Grande region — before our longer-term water crisis becomes water bankruptcy.
Assuming that the Southwest gets a temporary reprieve from increasing drying, we must use this time wisely to better focus and activate urgently needed water supply management for New Mexico and the Middle Rio Grande region before our longer term water crisis becomes water bankruptcy.
The New Mexico Water Advocates will continue to advocate for a balanced, equitable, and resilient water future for New Mexico through public education and civic engagement. Thank you for engaging with the Water Advocates and joining your voice to urge our state and local governments to act with the urgency the moment calls for.
Everyone must do their part. We must insist the State must do more of its part, better and faster.
Middle Rio Grande Depletions Are Pushing New Mexico Toward a Compact Violation
May 15, 2026
Written Public Comments to the ISC for its May 21 meeting.
Dear Chairman Sanchez, Vice-Chair Timmons, Secretary Anderson, Commission Members, and Director Riseley-White,
New Mexico’s Top Priority Water Resources Management Problem
Rio Grande Compact – Middle Rio Grande compliance ccmpliance metric history and trend
The facts are not in dispute. ISC Director Hannah Riseley-White and State Engineer General Counsel Nat Chakeres presented them plainly as invited speakers at the Water Advocates’ March 19, 2026, workshop. New Mexico carries an accrued compact debit of -132,000 acre-feet. The average annual debit is -19,800 acre-feet per year. The accrued debit limit is -200,000 acre-feet. New Mexico will violate that limit in three years if the trend continues or after one bad year.
New Mexico still has the ability to prevent a compact violation — but only through strong, proactive water resources management, and only if that management begins now. New Mexicans are far better off reordering their own affairs than drifting into a compact violation with the certainty that Texas will have its say at U.S. Supreme Court water bankruptcy proceedings.
The Middle Rio Grande is home to about half of the State’s economy and population and has the highest regional diversity. The State’s two water resources management agencies must protect the water supply that the compact provides for the economy and residents while also protecting the Middle Rio Grande and the State from the risks of Supreme Court litigation for using too much of the Lower Rio Grande’s water for too long.
The Rio Grande Compact is a perfect barrier protecting the Middle Rio Grande from the water demands of the Lower Rio Grande. A New Mexico compact violation opens the door.
The Interstate Stream Commission, A State Water-Policy-Making Body, Should Publicly Consider New Mexico’s Top Water Resources Management Problem
We are grateful that Director Riseley-White and OSE General Counsel Nat Chakeres spoke frankly about this problem at our March 19 workshop. We now urge you as a State Commission with purview over this emergency to take up the problem formally.
The Interstate Stream Commission is a State water resources planning and management policy-making body. It holds statutory authority and responsibility for compact compliance performance monitoring and is graded on Rio Grande Compact Compliance accrued debit status by a Legislative Finance Committee performance measure. That performance measure scale should now be deep in the red. The ISC also has a physical role and substantial funding to reduce Middle Rio Grande conveyance losses that annually worsen New Mexico’s compact deliveries.
This Commission Should Be Briefed, Deliberate, and Take Action.
We request that deliberations consider public comment before choosing or endorsing the State’s approach to prevent the dangerously close compact violation.
The State is quite late in addressing this problem. Because OSE and ISC are late, ISC Commissioners should consider whether resources should be marshalled for a more active compliance program — especially given that Director Riseley-White and State Engineer General Counsel Chakeres announced in March that staff would proceed slowly, through voluntary negotiations, with no metering order forthcoming until late in the year.
Several ISC Commissioners have openly expressed a preference for priority administration, yet the Commission has never been briefed on whether or how it could apply here, what the alternatives are, or what the consequences of each path might be.
We are convinced that water users will not consider the necessary sacrifices they must make Rto prevent a compact violation unless they are motivated by a potentially worse outcome in the absence of their participation, such as cutting off all non-essential uses for a period of time to make compact deliveries.
The Active Water Resources Management program provides a NM Supreme Court-approved legal framework. The Commission must take actions now to protect the Middle Rio Grande water supply in accordance with its statutory mission and broad powers “to protect and to do any and all other things necessary to protect, conserve and develop the waters and stream systems of this state.” Section 72-14-3 NMSA 1978.
Requested ISC Actions
New Mexico Water Advocates calls on the Interstate Stream Commission to take the following steps without further delay:
First, schedule a formal public briefing at the next Commission meeting on the state of compact compliance — the debt, the trend, the trajectory to violation, and the consequences of failure.
Second, deliberate and take a position on the management alternatives available to prevent a violation, including the regulatory authorities the State Engineer holds and has not yet exercised.
Third, direct staff to report publicly and on a regular schedule on progress — or the lack of it.
Fourth, become transparent about this problem in the name of advancing public education and public understanding of the issues, choices, and consequences and the quantity of depletions that must be stopped or prevented to maintain compliance.
The compact violation now in view would bring severe legal and economic consequences to New Mexico — consequences New Mexicans would live with for decades, administered by a federal court that does not forgive debt. This Commission has the authority, the responsibility, and the obligation to the public to address that threat openly. This problem must have a solution framework. ISC must lead its development.
The moment demands it.
Sincerely,
/s/
New Mexico Water Advocates
The New Mexico Water Advocates submitted this public comment to the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission on May 15, 2026. The ISC requires written public comment 72 hours in advance of its meetings but does not read comments into the record, post them publicly, or take oral public comment. It is the only state agency in New Mexico known to operate this way. We are publishing this comment here so that our 1,700-plus members, subscribers, and the interested public have access to it.
The Rio Grande’s water supply in New Mexico is arguably in an even more dangerous condition than the Colorado River
by Brian Richter, Sustainable Waters
The Colorado River has been in the news headlines a lot lately because the water stored in Lake Powell and Lake Mead has been heavily depleted in recent decades, putting the water supply for 40 million people in extreme jeopardy. The Rio Grande doesn’t receive nearly as much attention as the Colorado, but the Rio’s water supply in New Mexico is arguably in an even more dangerous condition because our reservoirs are tiny compared to those on the Colorado River, and we’ve used up more than 70% of the water that was stored in our reservoirs back in 2000. This year is extremely dry, and what little is left in our reservoirs could easily be wiped out by year’s end.
Richter: “We have lost more than 70% of all water that was stored in New Mexico reservoirs since 2000.”
I’ve spent the past four decades working on water challenges in more than 40 countries. The water crisis facing New Mexico is among the worst I’ve seen.
I knew things were getting bad in the Rio Grande basin because of the increased drying of the river, but it wasn’t until we completed our recent research that I realized how fast we’re using up our available water storage. We documented that only one-third of the water New Mexicans are consuming is being replenished with snowmelt runoff, rainfall, and aquifer recharge. When we consume more water than is being replenished, we dry up our reservoirs and rivers and deplete our groundwater aquifers.
Along the Rio Grande in New Mexico, we have been depleting our groundwater reserves at the rate of more than a half million acre-feet per year. That means that every year, we’re losing a volume of water supply sufficient to provide household water for everyone in New Mexico!
I’ve spent the past four decades working on water challenges in more than 40 countries. The water crisis facing New Mexico is among the worst I’ve seen.
When reservoirs run low, cities and farmers tend to pump much more groundwater to meet their needs. Along the Rio Grande in New Mexico, we have been depleting our groundwater reserves at the rate of more than a half million acre-feet per year! If that overdraft continues, the pumping will begin to suck more and more water out of the river (known as ‘river capture’), the ground surface could begin to drop and fracture roads as well as underground pipes and utility lines, and it will become increasingly expensive to pump groundwater because electricity costs will rise as the groundwater level falls.
Our over-consumption of renewable water supplies in New Mexico is also impacting farmers and cities downstream in Texas. A recent Supreme Court case found that New Mexico’s groundwater pumping downstream of Elephant Butte Reservoir was capturing river water owed to Texas under the terms of the interstate Rio Grande Compact. As a result, more than 9,000 acres (14 square miles) of farmland irrigated with groundwater within the Elephant Butte Irrigation District will need to be retired permanently. More frightening is the fact that New Mexico’s multi-year water debt to Texas has grown to a level that could trigger another Supreme Court lawsuit from Texas that could legally curtail water uses further upstream in the Middle Rio Grande.
Restrictions on groundwater use are urgently needed to prevent this underground crisis from wreaking havoc on our rivers, infrastructure, and economy.
There are two basic strategies for resolving a water overconsumption problem: reduce consumption or increase supply.
Increasing water supplies — such as by reclaiming polluted water from oil and gas fracking — is very expensive because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to clean the water adequately and to pipe it to where it is needed. These high costs generally make any increases in water supplies too expensive for use in irrigated agriculture, which consumes 90% of the Rio Grande water used for human purposes in New Mexico. There are also legitimate concerns about the inability of water treatment processes to remove hundreds of toxic chemicals and radioactivity.
Our research suggests that our reservoirs could be stabilized by reducing our use of river water by about 5%, but greater reduction will be needed to refill reservoirs. This certainly seems attainable at present, but this target will grow as our climate continues to warm in coming decades. Much more challenging is the need to reduce groundwater pumping by more than 60% to stabilize groundwater levels. Clearly, restrictions on groundwater use are urgently needed to prevent this underground crisis from wreaking havoc on our rivers, infrastructure, and economy.
Corrections: At Brian Richtor’s May 21 request, three corrections to the April 30 version are identified in blue italics type to correct errors discovered in the published paper.
Brian Richter and colleague Enrique Prunes will present their research on water supplies across the Rio Grande-Bravo Basin. Brian’s four-decade career has helped resolve water crises in more than 40 countries. Enrique, originally from Chihuahua and now based in Albuquerque, leads Rio Grande work for the World Wildlife Fund. Together, they’ll share what the science says about the basin’s condition — and what New Mexico must do about it. Join us for this virtual workshop on May 21 at 6:30 pm — the next in Water Advocates’ monthly workshop series. Preregister now.
The State Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan Omits Water Supply! That’s Unacceptable, It Must Be Fixed, and Here’s Why.
New Mexico is spending federal and state dollars to finish a Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan — due for publication in February 2027 — that manages to largely miss the point. The state is drying up. Not temporarily. Not cyclically. Permanently. And the plan that is supposed to prepare New Mexico for its climate future, to guide New Mexico’s adaptation, treats that fact as a footnote.
A Plan in Name Only
The June 2024 draft plan is being finished by the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department this year. The draft is not without merit. It acknowledges extreme heat, wildfire risk, and flooding. It uses acceptable language about equity and vulnerable communities. What it conspicuously, inexcusably fails to do is face the central reality of climate change in New Mexico. We are consuming far more water than our rivers and aquifers can sustain, and that gap is growing wider every year. The word “adaptation” appears in the plan’s title. The concept is almost entirely absent from its water chapter, which focuses community water infrastructure needs and ignores our shrinking water supplies.
Important Numbers and Facts Ignored
View downstream from the Otowi Bridge on the highway to Los Alamos
The Rio Grande at Otowi Bridge averaged slightly more than a million acre-feet per year from 1992 to 2008. From 2009 to 2025, the average annual volume was 796,000, a 20% loss. The river provided less than 500,000 acre-feet in 2025. Four of the last seventeen years produced more than one million acre-feet, compared to nine of the seventeen years before that. Everybody downstream depends on this water.
Clovis and Portales are out of water. Irrigators across the state who pump huge amounts of non-renewable groundwater to grow forage don’t know how much is left. The Lower Rio Grande Settlement will severely curtail groundwater pumping so the Texas share of Rio Grande flows will reach the state line. The river flow downstream from Caballo Dam this year and last isn’t enough to irrigate the 40,000 acres of pecans New Mexico farmers grow there. Because the Settlement is not in effect yet, the pecan farmers will continue to pump in 2026, adding to the big hole in the groundwater that the Settlement requires the State partially refill by cutting pumping.
This is not drought. Droughts end. New Mexico is undergoing aridification — a permanent, worsening shift in the hydrologic baseline driven by climate heating. The CARP uses the word “drought” throughout, as though winter snowpack will dependably return and rivers will gush again. A problem misnamed is a problem misframed.
The plan acknowledges research by New Mexico’s experts brought together by NM Tech. The experts volunteered their time because the State couldn’t pay them to write their excellent, prize-winning report! Those experts’ scientific evidence supports their conclusion that the state will lose 25% of its groundwater recharge and streamflow by 2070. But the plain truth is that we have lost half the historical amounts that flowed into Cochiti Reservoir as renewable water supply for all New Mexicans living along the Rio Grande plus the Texas share.
The San Juan-Chama Project is failing, producing only 39% of its “firm yield” in 2025. This year will be worse. The column chart below tracks San Juan-Chama water stored in Heron Reservoir at the end of every year since it began filling in 1978. The direction is unmistakable. Rio Grande headwaters snowpack for the 2025-2026 winter was the lowest since measurements began. It melted out before May. Historically, Rio Chama and Rio Grande peak spring flows were around Memorial Day.
The Middle Rio Grande is approaching a compact violation with severe legal and economic consequences. The Lower Rio Grande is in water bankruptcy, as are many regions of the state that depend on groundwater but have already exhausted most of it. That crisis does not appear in the CARP with anything approaching appropriate urgency.
Active Water Resource Management authority has not been applied to the Rio Grande — the river that motivated it — even though the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the State Engineer’s rules in 2012. The 2019 Water Data Act directing agencies are not getting their data online and available to all as that law requires. The 2023 Water Security Planning Act is in its fourth year of agency preparations to start the regional water planning program, with no funds for the regional councils that are yet to be formed to do the work. Water planning requires compiled data and computer simulation models. The data are not compiled; the models are not updated and ready.
Water agencies have many competent, hard working staff but don’t have the capacity or the modern information tools they need. The failure is not the staff’s. The Governor ignores the gap between supply and demand and touts “new water” as the answer. Legislative appropriators deny funding to implement the very laws they and their colleagues passed unanimously. Is the Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan allowed to honestly address water scarcity when the Governor and her Economic Development Department are actively recruiting new high water use industries to locate here?
The State Engineer is appointed by the Governor. She is New Mexico’s top water official with broad powers to govern New Mexico’s water. Hers is the authoritative public voice on New Mexico water, but she has not found the courage or demonstrated the leadership and public clarity the moment demands. The Interstate Stream Commission, a policy making body appointed by the Governor, has never once taken up the Middle Rio Grande compact compliance emergency in a public meeting.
This is malign neglect.
The Governor’s False Solutions
When New Mexico Water Advocates raised these failures directly with EMNRD staff, we were told the department relies on the Office of the State Engineer and Interstate Stream Commission for water policy. The staff response was sympathetic but constrained — these problems, they acknowledged, are beyond their control. True, but woefully insufficient.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham leaves office in January 2027. The CARP is scheduled to be published the following month. The CARP reflects her administration’s bias against tackling the combination of shrinking water supplies and our ruinous overuse of them. The Governor’s sole priority for water supply has been “new water” — reclaimed brackish groundwater and oilfield wastewater — sources that cannot close the gap we face even if the oil and gas companies’ rhetoric were true.
The Plain Truth
Meanwhile, the truth about unsustainable water use and increasing water scarcity goes unanswered by this administration. An adaptation plan that ignores our water supplies will not make New Mexico resilient.
Without water there is nothing. Adaptation to water scarcity is not optional. It is the precondition for everything else.
New Mexico deserves better — and barely enough time remains to demand it.
Articles authored by the New Mexico Water Advocates Operating Committee state the organization’s position.
NM Water Advocates Workshop Review, March 19, 2026
Hannah Riseley-White, Director of the NM Interstate Stream Commission, and Nat Chakeres, the State Engineer’s General Counsel, deserve our thanks as public servants and State leaders with authority and responsibility to govern New Mexico’s waters, which are the public’s. They made an admirably frank and thoughtful presentation, supported by informative slides, at the Water Advocates’ Middle Rio Grande Compact Crisis evening workshop. The prior evening, they had left their agencies’ Open House event at Elephant Butte at 8:00 pm to drive home to Santa Fe. They have big jobs, a large state, and lots of water problems demanding their leadership and judgment.
They presented honestly, using their own data to document the rapidly advancing crisis the Water Advocates have been describing. Hannah called the situation dire. Nat acknowledged the metering order said to be coming almost a year ago is not yet ready. Hannah called it overdue. Nat said plainly, “we will be the bad guy when we have to be.” We are grateful for state leaders willing to engage this directly and this publicly.
The Numbers Aren’t Waiting
But gratitude and concern can coexist.
What makes the case more forceful is not the numbers themselves. It is that top State water officials presented them. That is what carries authority. New Mexico currently sits at -132,000 acre-feet of compact debt. A compact violation occurs at -200,000 acre-feet. The average annual trajectory over the last decade is -19,800 acre-feet per year. Since 2018, only one year has not increased the cumulative debt. The 2021 apparent improvement was due to a paper accounting adjustment — not wet water arriving at Elephant Butte. Nat put it plainly: “we have been trying to turn the ship.” The ship has much inertia. The currents are strong. The ship has not yet turned.
The ship has much inertia. The currents are strong. The ship has not yet turned.
At the current trajectory, a compact violation is three years away. Hannah showed snowpack at the 0th percentile on the evening of the workshop. That means this year’s snowpack holds less water on this date than ever recorded. The runoff is coming down and will be essentially over in April, when recent peak runoff has been around Memorial Day. EBID’s surface water allotment this year is four inches. Hannah put it plainly: we are in uncharted territory.
A Collection of Parts and Hopes
Against that backdrop, the state’s goal to maintain compact compliance remains a collection of parts and hopes. One hope they expressed without a visible plan is that a negotiation — with whom? — will find a voluntary, timely solution. Are the incentives for cooperation and shared sacrifice greater than the incentives to litigate? “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”[1]
Nat rejected leading with an administrative approach, emphasizing that voluntary efforts must be given a chance. He also said agency staff are actively working, as their professional responsibility, on how to administer the Middle Rio Grande. The reality is the State Engineer is not ready. Some legislators say the leaders are not acting with the urgency demanded to prevent the compact violation.
The State Engineer’s 2004 General Rules for Active Water Resources Management, including a framework for shortage sharing agreements, was upheld by the NM Supreme Court in 2012. Under these rules, as step one, the State Engineer establishes the Middle Rio Grande Water Master District. Step two, the State Engineer issues a metering order. Step three, the State Engineer promulgates additional rules specific to the Middle Rio Grande. The State Engineer has yet to take the first two foundational steps.
Nat and Hannah emphasized that getting more water to Elephant Butte requires Middle Rio Grande water uses — human and natural — to deplete less, but that alone is insufficient. The river must efficiently transport the Lower Rio Grande’s legal share of inflows to Elephant Butte Reservoir where deliveries are accounted. The Middle Rio Grande’s southern end, below Socorro, has a failed engineered channel constructed decades ago. The river now is perched between levees on an elevated bed of sediment. The conveyance losses in this reach are high, regardless of the season and flow.
Hannah cited the genuine work underway — $55M in state channel investments across four legislative sessions, applying the Strategic Water Reserve to purchase water rights, deploying the Active Water Resources Management framework including issuing the forthcoming metering order, and making regional water security planning functional and effective.
But the metering order is being polished instead of issued. Regional planning councils under the 2023 Water Security Planning Act are not yet formed, much less funded, with drafting still underway for the binding guidelines that will set forth how everything is to work. A state regulatory approach is contemplated. That’s important because the adverse outcomes of rigid priority administration will motivate earnest negotiations for better outcomes. Negotiated outcomes are a goal of the Active Water Resources Management Program, but they take motivation and lots of time. Do we have enough time, with the three years to a violation trajectory?
Notably, the Interstate Stream Commission, the State agency created and given strong powers by statute, has never, not once, deliberated this Middle Rio Grande compact compliance crisis nor the approach and policies the Commission should apply.
One audience member asked a technical question about leveraging New Mexico’s stranded accumulated “relinquishment credits” to store water or for some other advantage. That brought a smile to Nat’s face; he replied he has been thinking about this. He again emphasized our situation is unprecedented, and that a Bureau of Reclamation official told him nothing should be off the table. Plainly, however, there is no water to store, and conveyance losses for water stored in spring and released the following winter for delivery to Elephant Butte Reservoir are too high.
Naming the Problem
Although both Hannah and Nat acknowledged our situation is aridification, Hannah used the word “drought” and announced the ISC is preparing a “Drought Toolkit” as a resource for communities. We raise this as a concern that has consequences, not a quibble. Hannah’s message describing our situation as “drought” reflects the notion of temporary — the implicit message that better times lie ahead — without any rational support for that reassurance. To her credit, Hannah stated the overriding plain truth: solving any water resources problem first requires understanding the hydrology and investigating different future conditions. The plain truth the Water Advocates see is that climate heating is permanently reducing and increasing the rate of depletion of New Mexico’s renewable water supplies — bad too soon.
A problem misnamed is a problem misframed. Shouldn’t we plan for the worst and hope for the best?
Norm Gaume opened the workshop challenging the state officials to recognize we are experiencing aridification caused by climate heating. Droughts end. Aridification does not. The data presented that same evening confirmed it — conditions now are worse than projected for 2070. The five warmest summers on record have all occurred in the last eight years, and snowpack is at its lowest in recorded history.
A problem misnamed is a problem misframed. Shouldn’t we plan for the worst and hope for the best? We will soon find the Middle Rio Grande in water bankruptcy if we don’t.
What Comes Next?
We left the evening more resolved. The legal framework exists. Some of the right people are engaged and speaking honestly. The ship must be turned, modernized, and the capacity created to take those essential water management decisions and actions that only the sovereign State of New Mexico has the authority to take. The moment requires the translation of acknowledged urgency into a specific, timed, and accountable action plan.
The State Engineer’s creation of the Water Master District and requiring meters on all significant wells are the first two steps. When will we see them?
Legislators were in the room that evening — we encourage every Water Advocates subscriber to follow our moderator’s advice and invite yours for coffee. When asked how people can help, Nat noted that nobody shows up at the legislature to advocate for essential agency modernization and IT systems funding. Water resources management needs champions.
The river has a lot of sand to deal with, as Nat said in explaining the river’s chronic conveyance problems and losses. As New Mexicans who want the best for New Mexico, in balance with hydrologic reality, we see a lot of sand in the machinery of responsible and responsive State and local water resources governance, too. We are running out of time to move it.
[1] Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince (1943). Saint-Exupéry was also a pioneering aviator who navigated by maps and instruments — a man who understood viscerally that aspiration without method is insufficient.
This is shaping up to be one of the driest years on record. Snowpack across the Rio Grande basin is near record lows. Elephant Butte Reservoir is very low; Elephant Butte Irrigation District farmers are expecting a four-inch 2026 irrigation allotment. Increased river flows from a big October headwaters storm, combined with the end of the Middle Rio Grande irrigation season and a large December block release from Rio Chama Reservoirs, significantly improved the Middle Rio Grande’s end-of-year compact deliveries — yet more than a fourth of that water was lost in conveyance before reaching the reservoir pool. Middle Rio Grande cumulative water delivery debt is now approaching the Rio Grande Compact’s legal cap. Texas will certainly sue when that debt limit is exceeded, if not before, bringing new U.S. Supreme Court litigation to the Middle Rio Grande.
The Middle Rio Grande Compact Crisis
The State Engineer and Interstate Stream Commission Director have named the Middle Rio Grande compact compliance situation as a crisis. The Middle Rio Grande is on a trajectory to violate the Compact within two or three years. State Engineer Elizabeth Anderson will violate state water law at Section 72-2-9.1 NMSA 1978 if her continued inaction allows that to occur. The ISC will fail to meet its mission to do everything within its broad powers to conserve and protect New Mexico water.
Join Us March 19 — Hear the State’s Plan
That is why our March 19 workshop Middle Rio Grande Compact Crisis is a must-attend event for every Middle Rio Grande resident. State Engineer General Counsel Nat Chakeres and ISC Director Hannah Riseley-White will present the State’s current hydrologic picture, including New Mexico’s Rio Grande Compact status and what it means for Tribal, agricultural, and municipal water users. The State is pursuing conservation, conveyance improvements, and expanded administration — and as Hannah writes, “working closely with major water users to develop creative solutions to meet needs while maintaining compliance with our legal obligations.” Join us. Register here.
What the Lower Rio Grande Tells Us
The featured article from our March 2026 News was written by Beth Bardwell from Las Cruces and this author to examine the Lower Rio Grande situation at the beginning of its post-litigation water management stage. Water use in the LRG has barely been affected to date by the litigation but water users there will soon dramatically feel the depth of the litigation consequences if the dry climate continues. The lessons for the Middle Rio Grande are neither abstract nor comfortable. Read the long-form article Drinking Water, Taxpayers, Pecans, and the Lower Rio Grande Settlement.
Groundwater Momentum Continues in March
Last month’s February 19 groundwater workshop with Dr. Gretel Follingstad and Dr. Maurice Hall was outstanding — the turnout, the depth of the conversation, and the community engagement it generated were exactly what New Mexico needs more of. Continue that momentum this month with two free webinars hosted by the New Mexico Groundwater Alliance. Details and registration links are in our article, Groundwater Is in Crisis — And the Experts Are Back to Talk Solutions.
The water and the consequences we will pay for ignoring its growing scarcity and our water sharing obligations are not waiting. We must stop waiting, too.
A landmark court settlement will force dramatic reductions in New Mexico groundwater pumping — and reshape who pays for water in the desert Southwest.
By Beth Bardwell and Norm Gaume
A Settlement That Changes Everything
For generations, Southern New Mexico residents and farmers have enjoyed cheap, seemingly unlimited water. That era is ending. A complex legal settlement between New Mexico, Texas, the United States, and the two major irrigation districts is expected to receive U.S. Supreme Court approval before this summer. If approved, it will become immediately effective. The consequences will be felt in every water bill, every farming operation, and every municipal water plan across the region.
The settlement resolves a lawsuit Texas filed in 2013, claiming that New Mexico groundwater users were pumping so aggressively that they depleted surface water flows legally owed to Texas. The United States joined Texas. The case wound through the courts for over a decade. New Mexico has agreed to substantially reduce groundwater pumping in the Lower Rio Grande basin — a region that has, for years, been drawing far more water than is sustainable.
The years of cheap water are over.
The Hidden Aquifer Problem: Why Most Residents Don’t See It Coming
Freshwater has always been something of an illusion in the Chihuahuan Desert. The sole source of water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and daily life is underground. Unlike a reservoir, you can’t look at an aquifer and see how much is left, or how quickly it is dropping. Water flows from the tap. It is relatively cheap. The population is growing. Outwardly, everything appears fine.
N Gaume photo Nov 2025
Meanwhile, the Rio Grande — New Mexico’s major river — runs dry through most of southern New Mexico’s cities and towns. Over the last 25 years (2000–2025), the Bureau of Reclamation and farmers have released streamflow into the river below Caballo Reservoir for less than six months on average each year. The 2026 irrigation season will be worse, with EBID farmers expecting just a four-inch allotment of surface water due to very low storage in Elephant Butte Reservoir and extremely low snowpack in the Rio Grande headwaters.
Many Southern New Mexicans do not realize that Lower Rio Grande streamflow and the Rincon and Mesilla valleys’ underground aquifers are directly connected. When too much groundwater is pumped, it intercepts water that would otherwise flow downstream. That is precisely what Texas argued and what the scientific and litigation record demonstrates.
How We Got Here: The Pecan Boom and a Policy Decision That Shaped the Crisis
To understand the depth of the problem, you have to understand what grows in the valley — and why.
Historically, Lower Rio Grande farmers grew hay, vegetables, and row crops. These are seasonal crops with moderate water demands that could be fully satisfied by a full Rio Grande Project surface water supply of about three acre-feet of water per acre. Over the past several decades, that changed dramatically. Today, more than half of the acreage within Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID) — approximately 40,000 acres — is planted in pecans. Pecans are a permanent, high-water-use crop. Unlike seasonal crops, they cannot be fallowed during drought years. They require full irrigation every single year.
Pecan orchard irrigation requirements are staggering. Growing a single pecan requires more than eight gallons of water. A mature pecan orchard produces roughly 187,900 pecans per acre and consumes almost five feet of water annually — nearly twice the allotment of surface water EBID farmers can expect in a full supply year.
It takes more than eight gallons of water to grow a single pecan.
Pecan acreage had been climbing for years, but it took a dramatic leap in the early 2000s following a specific policy decision. The late Governor Bill Richardson[1] directed then-State Engineer John D’Antonio to recognize a special water right for pecan orchards — nearly five feet per acre per year. That administrative determination was subsequently affirmed in the State District Court’s ongoing Lower Rio Grande water rights adjudication, locking it in. This crop-specific water right is unique due to its political origin and because it departs from New Mexico’s previously uniform practice of adjudicating a single water right amount for all farmers in an irrigated region, based on the total crop mix.
The question that now hangs over the settlement is an uncomfortable one: farmers on the Lower Rio Grande dramatically expanded production of a permanent, high-water-use crop during a period of documented drought, declining reservoirs, and growing interstate water obligations. Was that a poor investment decision — or a calculated bet that, at the end of the day, public taxpayers would absorb the cost? See Jeremy Miller’s “The Rio Grande’s Pecan Problem: How Big Ag Is Threatening New Mexico’s Water Supply,” High Country News, September 2025.
By the Numbers: How Much Has Been Pumped
The scale of groundwater extraction in the Lower Rio Grande basin is significant. During the three years ending in 2024, groundwater users pumped an average of 281,000 acre-feet per year from the basin’s shallow alluvial aquifer and the deeper Santa Fe Group basin-fill sediments. EBID farmers account for 83% of that total — approximately 235,000 acre-feet per year. Municipal, domestic, commercial, and industrial (MDCI) users represent the second-largest share at 14%, or roughly 40,000 acre-feet per year. Dairy farms account for 2.3%. These figures come from this table in the State Engineer’s Lower Rio Grande Water Master Report for 2024.
The cumulative impact of this extraction is substantial. State Engineer experts estimate that approximately 250,000 acre-feet have been drained from the shallow alluvial aquifer that underlies the valley floor. Another 1,000,000 acre-feet have been removed from the deeper Santa Fe Group aquifer system. The voids left by this pumping are being partially refilled by gravity flow from the Rio Grande itself — meaning the river is being pulled underground rather than flowing to Texas.
To offset the drawdown’s effect on Rio Grande streamflow, estimates suggest New Mexico would need to replenish approximately 750,000 acre-feet into its combined aquifers. That is roughly equivalent to three full years of current total groundwater diversions across the entire Lower Rio Grande basin.
On the municipal side, proactive conservation programs have kept MDCI pumping relatively stable despite population growth — a meaningful achievement that stands in notable contrast to the dramatic expansion of agricultural pumping. The State Engineer chart below illustrates the divergence between agricultural and municipal pumping trends over time.
Office of the State Engineer slide showing total agricultural and lumped non-agricultural groundwater pumping trends
Aquifer conditions and groundwater pumping levels, 1951–2021. Green lines reflects irrigation pumping; black lines reflects municipal, domestic, commercial, and industrial (MDCI) pumping. The lowest irrigation pumping was in 1985, less than 25,000 acre-feet. 2021 irrigation pumping was 280,000 acre-feet. Source: NM State Engineer.
What the Settlement Requires: Four Consequences for Southern New Mexico
The settlement is nearly finalized. When the Supreme Court approves it, four major changes will follow.
New Mexico Must Retire Groundwater Rights
The Settlement requires New Mexico to purchase and retire 18,200 acre-feet of actively used groundwater rights from willing sellers. The State must acquire half of those rights by 2030; the remainder by 2035. This represents approximately 5–7% of current total groundwater pumping in the Lower Rio Grande — the equivalent of retiring roughly 9,240 groundwater-irrigated acres within EBID, or 83% of the City of Las Cruces’s annual groundwater pumping.
These retirements are a starting point, not a finish line. Achieving full compact compliance will ultimately require groundwater pumping reductions well beyond this to meet other specific settlement requirements.
New Mexico Taxpayers Will Foot a $150 Million Bill
The State Engineer estimates that implementing the settlement will cost New Mexico taxpayers more than $150 million. Approximately $27 million in additional public funds is being spent this year and the following two years paying EBID farmers to fallow their fields — leaving irrigated land unplanted to reduce pumping.
There are legitimate arguments on both sides of using public funds to compensate private agricultural operations for adjusting their water use. What is harder to defend is that the conditions requiring this expenditure — a pecan-dominated landscape in a water-constrained desert, during a documented period of drought and compact obligation — were foreseeable, and in some respects policy-enabled.
Water Will Cost More — for Everyone
Southern New Mexico residents are facing higher water bills regardless of whether they live in a city or run a business. Farmers will suffer shortages. The reason is rooted in water rights priority.
The settlement formally recognizes a 1903 priority date for EBID’s surface and groundwater rights of 3.024 acre-feet per acre. That portion of EBID farmers’ total diversion rights is senior to almost all others. Under New Mexico’s constitution and water law, junior groundwater rights — including those held by the City of Las Cruces and New Mexico State University — cannot legally impair senior rights.
The settlement requires New Mexico, EBID, and the United States to negotiate with the City of Las Cruces and New Mexico State University — the affected water users participating as amici — to develop an alternative administration plan that would replace strict priority administration. That deadline is October 2026.[2] If those negotiations fail, strict priority water law prevails: junior municipal users get cut before a single senior agricultural right is touched. The negotiations are not open to the public.
In dry years such as 2021, 2022, and 2025, fully satisfying EBID’s senior rights would require more water than New Mexico’s total share of Caballo Dam releases, meaning agricultural groundwater pumping may need to be partially curtailed. In better years, EBID rights will claim all the water. As a consequence, cities may need to pay EBID farmers to reduce their pumping or develop alternative water supplies — none of which are inexpensive.
Possible alternatives include more aggressive municipal conservation, importing groundwater from outside the basin, reuse of treated wastewater effluent, and desalination of brackish water. All of these approaches are in active use in El Paso. All of them cost significantly more than the groundwater Southern New Mexico currently relies on.
More Rio Grande Streamflow — But Perhaps Not for Wildlife
One potential benefit of the settlement is that Southern New Mexico residents and wildlife may see more water flowing in the Rio Grande as New Mexico works to meet its delivery obligations to Texas. The 105-mile stretch of river that has run bone-dry for six months of most recent years could see more sustained flows.
However, even this outcome may be more limited than it appears. The Bureau of Reclamation and the NM Interstate Stream Commission are investing millions of dollars helping EBID improve operational efficiency and capture “surplus” stormwater — the wild water once allowed to flow freely in the Lower Rio Grande. This water, which once supported riparian habitat and downstream ecosystems, will be systematically captured for groundwater recharge. The environmental benefits of increased streamflow may be largely offset before the water ever reaches wildlife.
What This Means for You
The Lower Rio Grande Settlement is not an abstract legal proceeding. It is a turning point in how water is managed, priced, and prioritized across Southern New Mexico. The aquifer that supplies drinking water to Las Cruces, Doña Ana County, and dozens of smaller communities is connected to the same system that has been heavily drawn down for decades. The bill for that drawdown is now coming due — in court-mandated pumping reductions, in taxpayer-funded buyouts, and in the rising cost of water for every household in the region.
Southern New Mexico has long operated under the assumption that water from the ground is reliable, cheap, and essentially unlimited. The Settlement forces a reckoning with a different reality: that the desert’s water supply was never inexhaustible, that decisions made over the past two decades have accelerated its depletion, and that state taxpayers and Lower Rio Grande water users will broadly share the costs of those decisions.
Beth Bardwell is a water policy researcher and writer focusing on the Rio Grande basin. Her work appears in publications covering water law, environmental policy, and Southwestern water management.
Norm Gaume is a retired water engineer and former director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission.
[1] The State Engineer’s offers in the Lower Rio Grande water rights adjudication recognized a unique, crop-specific diversion right of nearly five acre-feet per acre for pecan orchards — a significant departure from New Mexico’s historic practice of recognizing a single water right amount for all farmers in an irrigated region based on the total crop mix. Among all adjudications statewide, the pecan offer stands as the outlier. This crop-specific right emerged during the Richardson administration. The political origins of the pecan crop water right in the Lower Rio Grande remain incompletely documented in the public record. The Salopek family, operators of one of the largest pecan farming operations in the region, were prominent stakeholders during this period. Co-author Norm Gaume has firsthand knowledge of these events from his work with the Office of the State Engineer during this time, including a contemporaneous conversation with the late Mark Salopek in which Salopek described the political origins of the water right.
Last month’s New Mexico Water Advocates workshop drew strong interest and attendance when Gretel Follingstad, PhD, and Maurice Hall, PhD, of the Environmental Defense Fund delivered a clear-eyed, compelling look at the New Mexico 360 Groundwater Report — and the urgency behind it. If you missed it, the video recording and presentation slides are available here.
The bottom line: groundwater supplies more than three-quarters of New Mexico’s drinking water, yet aquifers across the state are being depleted faster than they recharge — and another dry winter makes that reality harder to ignore.
The conversation continues in March. The New Mexico Groundwater Alliance is hosting two free webinars featuring additional report co-authors.
Thursday, March 5 | 12:30 PM MTNM Groundwater Data, Science & Administration Tools Featuring Adrian Oglesby, JD (Utton Transboundary Resources Center, UNM) and Stacy Timmons (NM Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources), moderated by Gretel Follingstad, PhD. 👉 Register here
Monday, March 23 | 5:00 PM MTNM Case Studies of Groundwater Management Featuring Ladona Clayton (Ogallala Land & Water Conservancy), Dr. Phil King (King Engineering & Associates), Ramón Lucero (RCAC), and Aron Balok (Pecos Valley Artesian Conservancy District), moderated by Gretel Follingstad, PhD. 👉 Register here
Authors: By Gretel Follingstad and Maurice Hall, Environmental Defense Fund
In New Mexico, like most western states, drought and climate change coupled with increasing water demands have pushed an invisible, yet vitally important natural resource — groundwater — into a crisis.
The New Mexico Groundwater Alliance recently released the New Mexico 360 Groundwater Report to elevate the urgency of the groundwater crisis facing New Mexico. The Alliance seeks to build long-term, multistakeholder collaboration to co-create resilient statewide groundwater management solutions.
The NM 360 Groundwater Report details significant data gaps, challenges and opportunities to protect the state’s declining groundwater supply.
On Feb. 19, Gretel Follingstad and Maurice Hall, both from Environmental Defense Fund, will join the New Mexico Water Advocates monthly workshop to discuss the New Mexico 360 Groundwater Report. Here’s a sneak peek at the most important points and priorities about groundwater in New Mexico from the report.
1. Groundwater is a lifeline for New Mexico’s communities and economies, serving as a critical source of water for drinking and irrigated agriculture.
More than three-quarters of New Mexico’s drinking water comes from groundwater. It’s a critical water source for community water systems, most of which are located in small rural communities. Sustainable groundwater management requires monitoring these vital underground water systems that support hundreds of communities and thousands of private domestic wells. Groundwater also underpins rural economies and agriculture, which is the largest groundwater consumer in New Mexico.
2. Better groundwater data is needed to ensure we have enough water to sustain New Mexico’s communities, economies and the environment for generations to come.
New Mexico’s high dependence on groundwater makes closing groundwater data gaps a top priority for communities, economies and the environment. Aquifer studies provide the foundational understanding of the state’s groundwater aquifers, the extensive natural infrastructure that stores and delivers our groundwater. These studies are critical for clarifying rates of groundwater depletion and shaping management responses.
The New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (NMGMR) conducts the state’s groundwater mapping and characterization studies. These studies are extensive and cost a lot of money. The good news is state legislators look poised to approve $22 million for NMGMR to continue these essential studies. This funding would be a big step in the right direction for sustainable groundwater management in New Mexico.
In groundwater-dependent areas like the High Plains (Ogallala Aquifer), we know there is an urgent crisis. Recent analysis by the Ogallala Land and Water Conservancy showed their groundwater supplies may only last 5 to 10 years without large reductions in use. Many other areas share stories of dropping water tables, declining water quality, wells going dry, and need for infrastructure improvements to meet water demands.
3. More groundwater metering is needed for better demand management.
The most accurate way to measure groundwater use is with meters installed on wells that pump groundwater. This is critical data for knowing how much water is pumped out of our aquifers. Without this information, the ability to effectively manage shared groundwater supplies is limited.
Currently, the majority of New Mexico’s wells are not metered. In the areas of New Mexico that are metered, such as the Pecos Valley Artesian Conservation District in Chaves and Eddy counties, groundwater pumping measurements provide essential information to meet legal obligations downstream. While metering was not popular with landowners initially, they eventually they this tool for ensuring everyone was playing by the same rules.
A recent op-ed co-authored by New Mexico Groundwater Alliance members Ladona Clayton, Aron Balock and Phil King, highlights the many benefits and positive outcomes from metered groundwater use, noting the whole state would benefit from metering to better inform local management decisions.
4. Native Nations, Tribes and Pueblos have valued water in New Mexico for time immemorial, and they have valuable knowledge to share about sustainable water management.
Climate change and water depletions are impacting New Mexico’s Tribal communities. For time immemorial, New Mexico’s 23 Native Nations, Tribes, and Pueblos have valued and recognized water as central to the existence, maintenance, and continuity of their cultural identity and physical well-being, as highlighted in the 2022 New Mexico Tribal Water Report.
“Tribes developed resilient water strategies and technologies in response to unpredictable changes in the physical, social, and cultural environment. Many Tribes developed broad systems of water management engineering, specifically for subsistence agriculture and other regenerative uses,” the report notes.
The report recommends the state of New Mexico issue formal recognition of Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) as contributing to the scientific, technical, social, and economic advancements of the state and to our collective understanding of our environment. The report also recommends the state work with the NM Indian Affairs Department to develop guidance for State agencies on consultation and application of ITEK.”
Improving groundwater management in New Mexico will require partnership, collaboration and coordination with New Mexico’s Nations, Tribes, and Pueblos to advance alternative, specific solutions as each Tribal Nation deems effective.
5. Groundwater supports the health of our rivers, streams and springs.
Groundwater is largely unseen, but it plays a vital role in the health of surface water flows throughout New Mexico.
Groundwater and surface water are often thought of as separate systems, but in river corridors they are interconnected. Depending on the physical setting and drought conditions, stream flow may be recharging groundwater or groundwater may be discharging to rivers and streams.
When groundwater is over-pumped in these interconnected systems, river flows decline, which impacts the river’s ecology, harming fish and wildlife and affecting the availability of water in the river. Consequently, in areas where groundwater and surface water are interconnected, they must be managed together.
As a fifth-generation New Mexican (Gretel) and recent transplant (Maurice), we cherish New Mexico’s majestic landscapes, from the high alpine mountains to river corridors and prairies and managing New Mexico’s precious water resources above and below ground, is essential to sustaining these landscapes, our communities, cultures, and economies, for future generations.
But our water supplies are at risk. New Mexico’s drought-fueled groundwater pumping has spiraled into a statewide crisis, amplified by climate change and population growth. We hope the New Mexico 360 Groundwater Report serves as a call to action for collaborative and proactive development of statewide groundwater management co-created with Native Tribes, rural communities, municipal water managers, agricultural producers, industry, and state legislators. We all must come together to protect this vital underground resource we depend upon, before it’s too late.
La Niña is the term for that part of a repeating cycle of cooling and warming of ocean waters in the east-central tropical Pacific that repeats every few years. La Niña patterns occur when the water is coolest, alternating with El Niño patterns that develop in the warmest years of this cycle. Historically, the global climate changes caused by La Niña conditions typically include reductions in rainfall across the Southwest during its traditional summer monsoon season. An El Niño can increase later summer and fall monsoons for the Southwest. Of major significance, an El Niño generally leads to significantly greater snow packs in the southern Rockies. Such changes also accompany increasing drought conditions for the northern Rockies and much of the Northwest, Midwest, and East.
The 
