U.S. Water News Online
ALBUQUERQUE -- All life needs water to survive, but there isn't enough to go around in the high desert of New Mexico.
In the coming millennium, barring technological or climatological miracles, there will be a limit on the number of people who can live in the state's thirsty cities and dusty, rural farms and cattle ranches.
Bluegrass lawns may be left to wither when watering guidelines become prohibit ions, and more restaurants will wait for patrons to ask for water before serving it with their meals.
And water will cost more. The city of Albuquerque, with New Mexico's biggest population center, already is in the midst of a rate hike that will boost the price about 30 percent over seven years. So just like garden plants that send out roots seeking their share of life-giving water, New Mexicans are staking their claims to the scarce resource -- mostly in court -- but also using innovative ways of channeling water from other states.
Rights on the water that flows through New Mexico are mired in a tangle of claims and counterclaims that some experts say will be argued in court for at least the next half-century.
The first recorded water claim dates to 1690, when Spanish settlers were putting down roots, said state engineer Tom Turney, the man responsible for overseeing the state's water.
Thousands of claims have been staked since then -- by farmers, ranchers, Indian pueblos, cities, and others.
In Albuquerque, until the late 1980s, experts proclaimed that the aquifer supplying the city was unlimited. Recent evaluations of how water moves on the surface and underground have forced water managers to take a more sober accounting of their supply.
They thought the Rio Grande -- a liquid lifeline spanning the state -- would recharge the aquifer as fast as the city drained it. But now, with a better understanding of how the river and aquifer interact, it is clear the city is depleting the aquifer faster than it recharges.
So Albuquerque is channeling in water from the Colorado River using the Rio Grande and Chama River as the pipelines to serve its industry and 450,000 residents.
If the city is able to use the imported water and if conservation programs are fully implemented, the city will be able to support about 775,000 people up to the year 2040, said John Stomp, who heads Albuquerque's Water Resources Management division.
The city has allowed some of its channeled water to be used to help keep the Rio Grande from drying up, which helps protect the silvery minnow, a federally listed endangered species. But as the city grows and its needs increase, it is becoming more stingy.
It recently went to court to get a ruling it hopes will ensure the water won't be appropriated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to support the struggling minnow's habitat.
Some environmentalists say the city's plans, allowing the population and industry to grow, will doom many of the native plants and animals living along the Rio Grande.
``If the city carries out its development plans, it will kill the Rio Grande,'' said John Horning, with the Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians.
Horning already worries about collapsing ecosystems along the Rio Grande as the cottonwood bosque, dying from a lack of seasonal flooding, gives way to two non-native water hogs -- the salt cedar and Russian olive. Four native fish already have disappeared from the Rio Grande and the silvery minnow would be the fifth, Horning said.
The amount of water needed to ensure a proper habitat for the minnow could support a city the size of Albuquerque, Turney said.
And keeping that much water in the river could prevent the state from filling the Elephant Butte Reservoir, which is used to store water claimed by New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico.
Horning said farmers need to become more efficient water users as well. ``Agricultural users divert 80 percent of the surface flow in the Rio Grande,'' he said. ``They are still diverting massive amounts and they don't even use it.''
Evaporation and seepage accounts for much of the loss, he said.
Agricultural water users on a stretch of the river between Cochiti and the Bosque del Apache south of Socorro -- from pueblos to members of traditional Spanish farming communities built around irrigation ditches called acequias -- are working on just such problems through the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.
Conservation is vital for the district to ensure its high-desert farmers get the water they need for their crops and livestock. Farmers are using lasers to make sure their land is level, which shortens the time they need to keep the gates open to flood their land, and a new metering program will allow the district to get a detailed picture of how water is being used and what efforts can be made to make the operation more efficient.
The district, using the water it stores in reservoirs, could weather about three or four years of drought conditions. ``We can spread the pain,'' district chief Subhas Shah said.
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