At its 2007 state Convention, the League of Women Voters of New Mexico approved a
two-year study of Water Supply and Demand. A third year was approved at the 2009
state Convention. The League will develop a statewide position
on the allocation of available water among competing uses, grounded in a basic
understanding of NM water availability and water law.
Most of the NM Leagues have studied water issues in the past but the resulting positions can not
be applied at the state level without statewide consensus. See the
existing local positions.
Consensus questions for the current state study have been developed in four areas:
What elements of "public welfare" are most important?
One-page background
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The NM Water Code states that "public welfare" must be taken into account
in the allocation of water, but the term has never been formally defined in New Mexico
at the state level. Most of the regional water plans do include a statement defining
"public welfare" for that region. They reveal a number of shared values but
also considerable variation in emphasis, and in some regions they generated considerable
controversy. Can LWVNM arrive at consensus on a definition of "public welfare",
specifically, on the values that should guide the allocation and reallocation of water
in our state?
Public welfare statements from selected regional water plans:
See the web site of the Office of the State Engineer for other
What should be the role of regional water planning?
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New Mexico recently completed its first set of regional water plans. Originally intended
to prevent the transfer of unallocated water out of state, the plans focus on addressing
the gap between supply and demand. They were created with significant opportunity for public
participation and include discussions of alternatives available to meet demand. However,
they suffer from a shortage of the accurate data necessary to create realistic water budgets;
they generally lack an implementation plan; and there are incompatibilities among some of the
plans where regions anticipate meeting demand with transfers from other parts of the state.
What should be the future for these regional plans?
The State Water Plan and
the Regional Water Plans can be found
at the OSE web site.
In 2006, the New Mexico Water Dialogue organized the Upstream/Downstream project, which brought
together delegates from each of the three regions that intersect the portion of the Rio Grande
between Otowi Station and Elephant Butte (specifically, the Jemez y Sangre, Middle Rio Grande, and
Sierra-Socorro regions) to review the incompatibilities among their plans and propose cooperative
solutions to the basin-wide deficit, which among other things threatens New Mexico's ability to
meet its commitments under the Rio Grande Compact. The resulting report is in the
December
2006 issue of the NM Water Dialogue (PDF 352 KB).
Details of the Middle Rio Grande water budget (PDF 4 MB) were also included in
Appendix B of the MRG Regional Water Plan. Important constraints are imposed by the
Rio Grande Compact (PDF 44 KB),
signed in 1939 and further codified in 1948. The
Executive Summary
(PDF 5.3 MB) of the Water Supply Study prepared by S.S. Papadopulos and Associates (Phase 3, 2004) also contains much
useful information, particularly in its figures.
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Why conserve water?
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There is general agreement that water is a scarce resource in New Mexico, and that there
is a water deficit in the Middle Rio Grande basin, the fastest growing area of the state.
But confronting these limits and taking conservation seriously raises the question,
Conservation For What? Who will benefit? How can we ensure that the benefits as well
as the sacrifice are shared in ways that reflect public values?
NRDC (2007).
In Hot Water:
Water Management Strategies to Weather the Effects of Global Warming. (PDF 2.6 MB)
This report summarizes the potential water
management impacts of climate change, describes existing climate-related activities of water managers around the West, and offers a full range of recommendations. See especially Chapter 4 for a review of conservation measures. The NM Governor's Drought Task Force has also produced a
report (PDF 152 KB).
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Basic references
Definitions and Units:
Unit conversion factors (acre-feet, gallons, and all that) plus brief discussions of the
doctrine of "prior appropriation", "adjudication", and "offsets".
Introduction to
New Mexico Water History and Terminology,
NM Legislative Council Service Information Bulletin, November 21, 2002.
Alleta Belin, Consuela Bokum and Frank Titus (2002).
Taking Charge of Our Water Destiny: A Water Management Policy Guide for New Mexico in the 21st Century. 1000 Friends of New Mexico. (PDF 856 KB) This comprehensive survey includes
discussions of New Mexico's priority water rights system, groundwater resources, and
urban/rural tradeoffs. One appendix is devoted to the ABCs of NM
water law, and another defines many terms.
Additional references
Regulation of Water Versus Hydrologic
Reality in New Mexico,
by Peggy Barroll (Southwest Hydrology 2003) is a good two-page
introduction to the regulation of
groundwater in New Mexico. (PDF 280 KB)
Hijacking the Rio Grande: Aquifer Mining
in an Arid River Basin by Lisa Roberts (Geotimes 2004) lays out the
complicated relationships among physical reality, New Mexico water law, and
development pressures in the Middle Rio Grande. (PDF 372 KB)
The San Juan/Chama Project (PDF 84 kB)
diverts about 110,000 acre-feet per year (afy)
of water from the Colorado River Basin across the continental divide into the Rio Grande Basin. More than half of
this is destined for the Middle Rio Grande region. Albuquerque completed its
San Juan Drinking Water Project
in December 2008. Eventually the project will provide 70-90% of the metro area's water.
The former system, relying entirely on pumping groundwater, was removing water from the aquifer twice
as fast as it could be replaced.
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Presentations and related articles
Who Owns Water? Water Rights in the Southwest States
by Brian Hurd, NMSU (2003) presents the legal history of western water law in general and then goes
into New Mexico law. (PDF, 1.7 MB)
NM Water Rights Fact Sheet
produced by the Bureau of Land Management.
Water and Drought in the 21st Century (slides, PDF format, 1.8 MB),
overview by UNM Professor David Gutzler. See also the report of the
NMENV Technical Work Group on
Potential
Effects of Climate Change in New Mexico (PDF, 148 KB) and
The Future is Drying Up
by Jon Gertner, published in the New York Times Magazine on October 19, 2007.
Sandoval County Water Issues (slides, PDF format, 1.1 MB),
presentation by Bob Wessely, including several slides dealing with the regional water budget and much more.
