When the Great River Dies Into Its Bed

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

---

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

---

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

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

---

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

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