U.S. Water News Online
LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- The state engineer has decided not to shut down water wells that do not have required meters, despite an earlier decision to do so.
About 40 state employees spent two weeks in March visiting 3,200 nonresidential wells from north of Hatch south to Sunland Park. They found that 76 percent of them didn't have the required meters despite a March 1 deadline to have them in place. About 764 of the wells had meters to track water usage.
Sheldon Dorman, the state engineer's water master for the lower Rio Grande area, said he expected more of the wells to be in compliance.
"There's hundreds of different kinds of meters," he said. "I'm not sure why there's a shortage."
The state engineer's office has relaxed enforcement of the rule until the end of the year -- one reason is because vendors said the meters are in short supply.
Cheryl Fox, the manager of a Las Cruces company that sells meters, said as the deadline approached, the number of people calling about meters peaked.
"[A month ago], about seven out of every 10 phone calls were looking for a meter," she said.
The high cost of meters also is keeping some farmers from buying them, said Gary Esslinger, manager for the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, who helped negotiate the extended deadline.
"If a farmer has 10 wells at $1,000 a meter, can he do that? I don't know," he said.
He said the irrigation district is looking into loan programs to help farmers buy meters.
Runoff from the Rio Grande is expected to be light this year, and farmers likely will rely on wells to supplement irrigation.
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