English Archives - Main Stream New Mexico

Making Every Desert Downpour Count

katMainstreamadmin — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:53:44 +0000

Making Every Desert Downpour Count

Can Stormwater Help New Mexico Weather A Historic Drought?

Jun / 2026

It rushes down streets and arroyos, pools in great puddles in the middle of the road and evaporates when the sun reemerges at the end of a downpour. In arid states like New Mexico where every drop counts, seeing stormwater race away to the river or return to the atmosphere seems like an enormous missed opportunity.

It begs the question: how can we capture those downpours to ease our drought woes?

The Albuquerque west side has used a perhaps unexpected tool: the ground beneath it. When monsoon storms roll through each summer, a portion of the water from the west side’s sand-bottom arroyos infiltrates slowly into the earth, replenishing the aquifers that supply our communities’ water. No treatment plant, no pump station, just gravity and soil doing what nature designed them to do.

Bruce Thomson, an environmental engineer, former director of the UNM Water Resources Program, and current Albuquerque Metropolitan Arroyo Flood Control Authority (AMAFCA) board member, has watched the shift to working with the landscape play out across nearly five decades working on New Mexico water challenges.

“Up until about 1990, we tried to get stormwater off the site as rapidly as possible,” Thomson says. Concrete channels built in that era pushed water toward the river at 35 or 40 miles per hour. The approach is effective at flood control, but the water is gone in minutes and the force can take people with it. Over the last 10 years about 17 people have died in Albuquerque’s stormwater channels during flood conditions, says Thomson.

The shift to sand-bottom arroyos is not only safer for the public, it provides other benefits. “If we do our stormwater management right,” says Thomson, “our facilities can be very nice and feature recreation, open space, and environmental amenities.”

That shift in thinking has never mattered more. New Mexico is in the grip of what climatologists call the worst drought in 1,200 years, and both the State of New Mexico and the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority have made stormwater recapture an aim of their water conservation plans. But turning rainfall into a reliable resource is not easy.

“If we do our stormwater management right,” says Thomson, “our facilities can be very nice and feature recreation, open space, and environmental amenities.”

Part of the challenge is scale. New Mexico is one of the driest states in the US, averaging about 13.5 inches of rainfall annually. Applied to the Rio Grande as an example, only about 2% of the Rio Grande’s flow comes from direct rainfall. The vast majority of surface water in New Mexico arrives as snowmelt from the mountains in the northern part of the state and southern Colorado. That precipitation, though, is still part of a river system serving millions of people, and supplying water to farms and ecosystems. In a place where every drop is allocated and accounted for, capturing even a fraction of what currently evaporates off hot pavement is worth the effort.

The legal landscape adds another layer of complexity. New Mexico’s prior appropriation system treats surface water as a public resource, allocated to permit holders in order of seniority (this principle is sometimes summarized as “first in time, first in right”). State law requires a water right to hold captured rainwater no more than 96 hours. Without this limitation, an impoundment is diverting water that downstream rights holders are legally entitled to. Getting those water rights for stormwater capture is achievable, but it can’t happen informally. It requires planning, permitting, and often significant infrastructure investment.

That infrastructure cost is the third obstacle. To actually pipe captured stormwater to homes and businesses, it needs to be collected, treated to remove the oil, debris, and contaminants it picks up on city streets, stored, and then distributed through a separate network of pipes. Building that system from scratch comes with a very big price tag.

So where does that leave a city or town trying to stretch its water supply through a prolonged drought?

The answer, Thomson suggests, may lie in working with watershed rather than against it. In Albuquerque, there’s a growing interest in capturing stormwater and recharging the aquifer through bioswales, infiltration galleries, and through our arroyos. These features allow stormwater to soak into the ground. There’s also permeable pavement, a strategy that allows water to seep through paved roads and parking lots rather than evaporate or race toward the nearest drain.

Beaver-dam analogs are also being deployed in small streams across the arid southwest. These simple, low-cost structures mimic the water-slowing effect of natural beaver dams to reduce erosion, retain moisture, and encourage natural aquifer recharge. None of these approaches involves treating water to drinking standards or constructing miles of new pipe. They focus on safely moving that stormwater while putting it to other beneficial use.

The more ambitious vision Thomson and other water managers are working toward proposes managing drinking water, stormwater, wastewater, and groundwater not as separate systems but as parts of a single interconnected cycle, a concept known as One Water. Albuquerque is already using aquifer storage and recovery to bank excess water underground during wet periods, then pump it back during dry ones, effectively turning the earth itself into a reservoir.

What these approaches share is a recognition that the goal of stormwater management has changed. It’s no longer just about moving water away from people safely, it’s about working with landscapes to make the most of what we have.

The post Making Every Desert Downpour Count appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

Farming Through The Worst Drought in 1,200 Years

katMainstreamadmin — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:50:26 +0000

Farming Through The Worst Drought in 1,200 Years

Threading a Needle in the Mesilla Valley

Jun / 2026

James Sloan has never farmed in anything but a drought.

For nearly the past quarter-century, he’s grown in the famously fertile ribbon of land known as the Mesilla Valley. It has been an exercise in patience.

But some of that waiting is standard for a farmer: Waiting for crops to grow. Waiting for the market to cycle upward again. Waiting for the harvest to bring in enough money to sustain the family for another year.

But some of it is unique to this valley, a checkerboard of hues of green in southern New Mexico that yields nearly one-quarter of the nation’s pecan and chile crops and is known far and wide for its mid-summer onions and alfalfa. That’s because, since the turn of the century, the already arid southwest has been weathering the worst drought in 1,200 years.

Farmers like Sloan, owner of Monte Vista Farms in La Mesa, New Mexico, have waited and waited for the rains and the river to return. A fifth-generation Mesilla Valley grower, Sloan cultivates onions, cotton, alfalfa, pecans, and wheat on about 2,000 acres of land scattered throughout the valley. He remembers when the waters of the Rio Grande reliably flowed through his family’s fields in the 1980s and 90s. His father’s era relied almost entirely on surface water released from Elephant Butte Reservoir. Even taking into account the state’s downstream obligations under the Rio Grande Compact, surface water used to meet about 80% of Doña Ana County irrigators’ needs, and groundwater supplied the balance.

Today, that calculus has shifted. The riverbed is frequently dry due to ongoing drought and low snowpack in the north, creating a more intensive demand on groundwater for irrigation. “Without access to groundwater, we could not farm down here” says Sloan.

“Without access to groundwater, we could not farm down here” says Sloan.

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

Drought conditions have come at a high cost, and Sloan and his neighbors have had to adapt, sometimes rapidly. Wells have to be dug deeper, and labor and energy costs are on the rise. “You've got to be a strategic farmer right now to survive because it's very expensive compared to even 20 years ago,” Sloan says.

With his family legacy of over 100 years and five generations in Mesilla Valley, Sloan is committed to keeping the farm operating, “you’re trying to do the best you can with your land and your water to try to keep going,” he says. “The last thing you want to do is do anything that’s gonna hurt that.”

For Sloan, staying in business and conserving water go hand-in-hand. Nearly all of the farm’s vegetable and onion fields run on drip irrigation, with individual lines buried beneath each row. Dirt ditches that carried water across the valley when he was a child have largely been replaced by concrete-lined channels and pipeline to prevent water loss, and he participates in the Lower Rio Grande Groundwater Conservation Program through the State Engineer’s office, which pays farmers to fallow fields to reduce water use.

“Now we’re having to be really careful with the water we have, versus when we had a lot of water, people probably didn’t pay as much attention to detail,” he says.

INVESTING IN AN AGRICULTURAL GEM

Despite steps forward, much remains to be done to ensure the Mesilla Valley retains its reputation as an agricultural gem without hollowing out the aquifers beneath it and driving itself out of business.

The region’s agricultural economy was built in more abundant times on crops that are known for being thirsty. With yet another year of Elephant Butte Reservoir at critical lows, Sloan and other farmers in the area are reckoning with tough choices. Thirsty crops that rely on groundwater are unsustainable under these conditions, but switching to different, more doubt tolerant crops is “a really big gamble,” as Sloan puts it.

Conservation solutions that research supports, like switching from pecans to water-wise pistachios, could provide a window of opportunity, maintaining livelihoods and saving water, but it takes threading a needle: farmers, the market, and processing facilities would have to line up to keep farms like Sloan’s from going under betting on a water-wise crop. Like pecan trees, pistachios grow for years before fruiting. When the nuts are harvested, they need to be hulled and dried within hours to avoid rot during transportation. There is currently no facility in New Mexico to process pistachios at scale. “I can’t grow a crop because it takes no water and then go broke,” Sloan says. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

With the recent Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado settlement the region will begin shifting from the Groundwater Conservation Program to permanently retiring groundwater rights through a paid willing seller program. Over the next 10 years, roughly 6% of the current groundwater pumping will be permanently retired in the Lower Rio Grande through a new Water Rights Purchase Program (WRPP) run by the Interstate Stream Commission. Permanent retirement takes water out of the system for good, giving the aquifer a chance to stabilize rather than simply recover ground between dry spells. It is a structural step in the right direction, but one piece of a much larger puzzle. It’s also one that farmers will, again, have to weigh.

For Sloan, uncertainty means there are no readymade solutions. "That's the scary part about the water: a lot of it is unknown. I don't think anybody really has a great answer,” he says. “Right now, we're basically just trying to keep our infrastructure in the best shape it's in and adapt to the changes as they come."

The post Farming Through The Worst Drought in 1,200 Years appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

Compacts Benefit and Bind Us

katMainstreamadmin — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:23:53 +0000

Compacts Benefit and Bind Us

Balancing Interstate Water Obligations in Times of Drought

May / 2026

Before 1878, when the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad started steaming its way through southwest Colorado’s San Luis Valley, sagebrush and stands of native grasses dotted the landscape. Native Peoples and Spanish settlers used hand-dug diversion ditches to reroute just enough stream water to grow their crops.

Then came the train — and the ambitious settlers who arrived along with it. Within 15 years, the landscape had transformed. Fields flushed green with water diverted from the mighty Rio Grande through much larger engineered canals. By 1892, 400,000 acres in Colorado’s San Luis Valley were under irrigation, consuming two-thirds of the Rio Grande’s flow into the valley. One policymaker called it “bonanza farming.”

The unfettered growth eventually left downstream irrigators in New Mexico in dire straits, struggling to grow their crops with sedimented water and unpredictable river flows — signs of a water system in crisis.

In the arid Wild West, growth in one valley could mean devastation in the next. It wasn’t until the 20th century — with the advent of interstate water compacts and other policies governing this scarce resource — that these latest settlers of the high desert started to share what they had.

Despite the lessons of yesteryear, we are still onboarding this wisdom.

Rolf Schmidt-Petersen, New Mexico’s current commissioner for the Canadian River Compact and the former director of the Interstate Stream Commission, built his career on helping New Mexico and its neighbors find a balance through its interstate compacts. And yet, he says, one of the most frequently asked questions he hears from farmers, lawmakers, and even water professionals is why a state would agree to limit its own water use in order to share with downstream states.

“People say, ‘Why would you ever do that?’” Schmidt-Petersen says. “But compacts provide both constraints and opportunities. By spreading the water out, you’re able to maintain your values and your local economy all the way down through the system, as opposed to saying one state’s going to take it all and the rest gets nothing.”

“By spreading the water out, you’re able to maintain your values and your local economy all the way down through the system, as opposed to saying one state’s going to take it all and the rest gets nothing.”

‘Eight different ways to play’

All interstate compacts both benefit and bind us, but for the most part, the similarities end there. New Mexico is party to eight different interstate agreements, and Schmidt-Petersen says they’re so different that it’s like “coming up with golf rules, but you've decided to have eight different ways to play.”

The Canadian River Compact in northeastern New Mexico, for example, is a comparatively simple system in which New Mexico stores a certain amount of water in Ute Reservoir and sends the rest downriver toward Texas. The Rio Grande Compact, on the other hand, requires upstream states to make deliveries to their neighbors based on gauge readings at specific points along the river. A system of debits and credits helps balance out deliveries in the aftermath of a wet or dry year. A separate treaty with Mexico dictates how much Rio Grande water belongs to our neighbors south of the border.

But lately, amid what scientists describe as the driest period in the American West in over 1,000 years, upstream states can struggle to meet downstream obligations. Tensions rise, and it’s harder for everyone to share this precious resource. (In Texas v. New Mexico, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a proposed resolution to a related case that concerns the impact on surface water of New Mexico’s pumping of groundwater.)

“The piece that’s potentially flawed is, when you put a compact in place, how do you plan for various different futures?” says Schmidt-Petersen.

Both the Rio Grande and Colorado compacts considered river flows from the early 1900s to determine compact terms, and the original authors “kicked the can down the road” on some difficult issues, including clearly defining what happens when flows change dramatically, he says.

Shared values and compromise

Even so, Schmidt-Petersen sees compacts as the best way for states to protect their water interests. Without them, resolutions to disputes could be out of our hands.

“If New Mexico didn't have these interstate stream compacts, in all likelihood we would have either Congress or court decrees from the U.S. Supreme Court telling us what we can use and how much,” he says. “And it may not be within our control. Being in compliance gives us options to do the things that we would like to do.”

When New Mexico’s regional planners begin the important work of prioritizing projects for their region, they’ll first have to consider our obligations to other states. Schmidt-Petersen’s advice? Start with values — and expect to compromise.

“Because of the long-term drought, nobody has all the water they want for most of the things they want to do. Water users are struggling with a lack of water in all parts of the basins,” he says. “You’re going to have to say, as a region, if we want to develop something new, how are we going to work together to reduce our use somewhere else?”

It may be hard to hear, but Schmidt-Petersen says it’s that spirit of collaboration and compromise — begun (at least in modern times) all those years ago on the rivers of the West — that will help us continue life in an increasingly aridified landscape.

The post Compacts Benefit and Bind Us appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

Making Tribal Water Rights Right

katMainstreamadmin — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:14:50 +0000

Making Tribal Water Rights Right

The history and urgency of Indian water rights settlements

May / 2026

In a few years, a final pipe will be laid, a tap will open, and one of the longest-running court cases in the history of the United States will, at long last, come to a close.

It’s been 60 years since the start of State of New Mexico v. Aamodt, et al, an Indian water-rights adjudication case that legally quantified water rights — including the rights of acequia parciantes, well owners, Tribal entities, farmers, municipalities, and corporations — in northern New Mexico’s Pojoaque Valley. Decades of litigation, heated negotiations, sensitive cultural conversations, false starts, and, ultimately, progress, are culminating in resolution.

But for anyone familiar with Indian water rights settlements in the western United States, the Aamodt case is not unusual. It’s one of many critically important — albeit challenging and lengthy — legal proceedings that are helping Western states and their sovereign neighbors settle Tribal water rights and plan for a drier future, together.

“These settlements are crucial,” said Nicole Greenspan, the lead attorney handling Indian water rights cases for the Office of the State Engineer. They allow us to get everybody to the table who’s involved in any water use in the system and make sure that we come up with a plan that works for Tribal and non-Tribal people. It protects everybody.”

“They allow us to get everybody to the table who’s involved in any water use in the system and make sure that we come up with a plan that works for Tribal and non-Tribal people. It protects everybody.”

‘The first stewards of the river’

Many of these cases, including Aamodt, date to the 1960’s and ’70s, but understanding them requires a bit of background in the (fascinating and complex) history of Western water law.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, U.S. courts established the legal principle of prior appropriation, or “first in time, first in right.” The idea is simple: Whoever diverts water first and puts it to a “beneficial use,” like domestic consumption, crop irrigation, or gold mining, has the most senior right. Everyone else queues up from there. Today, prior appropriation governs water-rights disputes throughout the arid West.

And in New Mexico, there’s no question who’s at the front of the line.

Native American Tribes have inhabited New Mexico for far longer than anyone else. The ancestors of today’s Puebloans diverted water from the Rio Grande to nurture their crops and sustain their families. In legal terms, the priority of Pueblo water rights based on this first-in-time use is referred to as “time immemorial.”

“They are the first stewards of the river,” Greenspan said.

‘Can we just finish this before I die?’

But in the absence of an adjudication, it’s hard to know exactly how much water each Tribe has a right to, and from where. This makes administration of water rights by priority extremely challenging and creates uncertainty for more junior users, like acequias, municipalities, domestic well owners, industry, and others. That’s where Indian water rights adjudications like Aamodt come in.

Since the early 20th century, New Mexico law has required the Office of the State Engineer to adjudicate every water basin and stream system in the state. The process is complex and tedious, involving Tribal, state, and federal governments; negotiations with, in some cases, thousands of water rights holders; and often contentious cultural conversations.

Hence, the lengthy court cases.

And yet, in recent years, the Office of the State Engineer has made a flurry of progress in resolving Tribal water claims that had been pending for decades. Since 2022, five Tribal water rights settlements have been signed and await Congressional approval in Washington, D.C. That’s more than the four settlements that had been completed in the decades up to that point.

Greenspan said progress is, in part, thanks to stakeholders’ understanding that establishing clear boundaries for water use is of the utmost importance as we weather the worst drought on record and head into a future that promises to be even drier.

“It does get contentious, and there are cultural battles all the time,” Greenspan said. “These things are very layered and very difficult, but a lot of the water rights holders, at the end of the day, grew up together, you know? They went to school together, their families overlap, and they live within the same communities and share the same resources. And everybody's goal at the end of the day is the health of the river and the health of the system.”

And because it’s such a lengthy legal and political undertaking, most stakeholders are eager to bring these cases across the finish line.

“We've had a couple of people over the years say, ‘Can we just finish this before I die?’” Greenspan said.”

What comes next

Contentious and prolonged though these cases may be, so far rightsholders have been able to reach accords in the vast majority of cases. For New Mexico’s Pueblos, Tribes, and Nations, in most cases, that has meant significant give-and-take.

As the senior rightsholders, they are relatively well-protected in times of drought (on paper, at least, if not always in practice). But in most settlements, the State of New Mexico has negotiated the waiver of Tribal entities’ right to a priority call. In other words, in the driest years, they have agreed not to assert seniority, which would deny junior rightsholders access to water. The goal is to share what we have, and the settlements reflect that value.

In exchange for this concession, state, local, and federal governments have agreed to funnel funds to Tribal and non-Tribal entities for the development of vital water-infrastructure projects — which brings us back to Aamodt.

Congress approved the settlement in 2010, awarding the plaintiffs in the Pojoaque Valley case, including the Pueblos of Nambé, Tesuque, Pojoaque, and San Ildefonso, $250 million in infrastructure funds. With that money, they developed the Pojoaque Valley Regional Water System, a network of pipes and valves that brings in much-needed water from the Rio Grande and helps reduce the region’s reliance on groundwater. Implementing this system is the final step in the Aamodt case, and it’s set to be completed in 2029.

For Greenspan and her team at OSE, work on the remaining cases is likely to continue well into the next decade. Despite the state’s progress in adjudicating Tribal water rights, much remains to be done, including the adjudication of the middle Rio Grande basin, which comprises the Albuquerque metropolitan area and land belonging to six Pueblos.

Greenspan hopes the case can be completed in 10 years but acknowledges that would be “quick” in comparison, especially since no state in the country has yet to adjudicate the rights of six Tribal nations at the same time. Still, she knows her team has stakeholder sentiment on her side.

“We have a team that’s super motivated to do it, and our leadership is really supportive,” Greenspan said. “It benefits all of us to have water rights that are quantified and enforceable, and to be able to plan with a little bit more certainty.”

The post Making Tribal Water Rights Right appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

Off the Shelf

katMainstreamadmin — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:08:45 +0000

Off the Shelf

Next steps in water planning in New Mexico

Apr / 2026

For decades, regional water plans in New Mexico often ended up as binders on a shelf — carefully written, rarely referenced.

But in a state where water is quickly dwindling, it’s more important than ever to turn abstract plans into action. So now, a small team at the Interstate Stream Commission is reenvisioning the planning process for a drought-resilient future, reshaping it from a one-time task into an ongoing, community-driven system.

This work began with the passage of the Water Security Planning Act in 2023 and continues today. Here’s an update on where we’re at in the process — and what New Mexicans can expect when regional councils begin their work.

‘That flexibility is really important now’

The framework that will guide ISC’s support for regional planning councils is beginning to fall into place. In February 2026, the Interstate Stream Commission adopted the formal rule that will govern the process. One major step remains: the adoption of detailed guidelines that outline how councils will actually be formed and how planning will proceed on the ground.

Those guidelines, which are designed to be flexible enough to adapt to regions’ needs, are already in development and are expected to go through a round of public input before being finalized by the commission.

“They’re really meant to adapt to the process,” says Sara Fox, senior water planner at ISC. “Building in that flexibility is really important now. Climate change is moving quicker than we can keep up with our own laws and goals.”

From there, each region will enter what Fox calls the “initial planning period,” a roughly two-year phase focused on forming councils, gathering input, and producing a first regional water plan. NMISC will stagger the nine regions’ start times, supporting three regions at a time over a period of six years. After initial planning, regions will go into an “ongoing planning period” where they’ll put the plan into action, developing, funding, and implementing the projects, programs, and policies each region has prioritized for a sustainable water future.

Afterward, the process will repeat itself each decade, giving stakeholders a chance to take stock of progress and re-focus priorities. In other words, the process doesn’t end with the first plan—it’s designed to continue indefinitely, to be a “living document,” Fox says.

“We’re trying to look at these in a new light,” she says. “We want these plans to be documents that people visit and look at and learn from and utilize.”

Top down, bottom up

Regional water planning isn’t new to New Mexico. In fact, the Land of Enchantment was the first Western state to pass such a statute in 1987. But ISC Planning staff say the current iteration is fundamentally different in a few key ways.

Earlier planning efforts either relied heavily on grassroots participation with limited support from the state (a bottom-up approach) or centered on prescriptions from on high (a top-down approach).

The new framework aims to strike a balance by requiring representation from key groups while still allowing flexibility in who fills those roles.

The goal, Fox says, is to “set a bigger table,” ensuring that not just the usual voices are present. The approved rule engages more stakeholders — representatives from each region’s municipalities, conservancy districts, county governments, irrigation districts, Pueblos, Tribes, and Nations, soil & water conservation districts, acequias, active land grants, flood control authorities, and regional water utility authorities — better-positioning projects to move forward.

The state is also shifting to a more active support role. Though this section of the initiative has yet to receive state funding, the WSPA calls for hiring regional water planners to assist and support regional councils throughout the state. These yet-to-be-funded full-time ISC staff members would help coordinate meetings, maintain continuity, and find ways to push projects, programs, and policies forward in each region.

Balancing state and local needs

Even as regional planning takes center stage, it won’t operate in isolation.

State water planning plays a different—but complementary—role. While regional efforts look inward, focusing on local needs and priorities, state planning looks outward, addressing issues that span regional boundaries or involve external obligations.

That includes interstate water compacts, endangered species requirements, and Indian water rights settlements—what the planning team describes as “The Big 3” — all of which shape how much water is available and how it can be used across the state on a larger scale.

“We’re trying to make sure New Mexico continues to be a great neighbor, and that we keep those relationships positive,” said Anne Ruthstrom, the senior water planner who leads state water planning at ISC. “You know, it's becoming a very, very tight water scene. I think for New Mexicans and our neighbors, we’re all starting to see and feel the impacts of that.”

Historically, regional plans were often rolled up into a single statewide plan that simply summarized what was already published. But that approach didn’t always reflect the large-scale issues or diversity of conditions — geologic, cultural, political — across New Mexico, where water challenges can vary dramatically from one region to another.

The new approach is less about consolidation and more about coordination.

“I really think it’s important for us to think locally when we’re thinking about how to solve our water problems,” Fox says. “But that cannot be completely separate from these larger external forces.”

That balance reflects a broader reality: New Mexico’s water future depends both on what happens within its communities and on forces beyond its borders. And it will take all of us coming together to find a balance.

“That’s how the process works, right?” Ruthstrom says. “You don't get meaningful outcomes without being involved. And we are all neighbors. That’s not changing anytime soon. So we should work within the framework we have, and work to improve it if we need to.”

The post Off the Shelf appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

Measuring Up New Mexico’s Aquifers

katMainstreamadmin — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:13:47 +0000

Measuring Up New Mexico’s Aquifers

A closer look with Katie Zemlick, OSE Hydrology Bureau Chief

Mar / 2026

Beneath New Mexico’s landscapes is a hidden anatomy of sediment and rock that governs how we live on the surface. New Mexico’s 39 groundwater basins — natural containers that house our aquifers — are crucial sources of water for most of New Mexico’s population. Over half of the water New Mexicans consume annually comes from these underground sources. Yet, there is little known about our aquifers or how long they will last.

Part of the challenge is our landscape’s geologic complexity. The other challenge is that aquifers vary widely based on the complex — and unseen — rock and sediment structures that compose them. Some, like the aquifer beneath Albuquerque, sit near the surface and are connected closely with surface water systems. These aquifers replenish at a faster rate. Others are more isolated, refilling so slowly that the water we draw today may have fallen as rain before human history.

“We know we get very minimal recharge into some aquifers, so what you’re doing in effect is mining them,” says Katie Zemlick, Hydrology Bureau Chief for the Office of the State Engineer. “If you think about mining water the same way you would think about a coal mine, at some point there’s no resource left.” Overmining not only depletes water volume, it can also collapse aquifers or separate previously connected systems by creating dried-out, unsaturated zones of soil and rock.

Already in New Mexico, communities are feeling the impact of overmined aquifers. Some parts of the multi-state Ogallala Aquifer, for example, which underlies cities like Portales and Clovis in eastern New Mexico, have lost 60% of their water volume.

“We need accurate mapping of formations, and we need to know aquifer properties and how aquifers are connected to each other to try and get a sense for how much water is available,” Zemlick says. “We don’t have that.” At least not yet.

Building ‘a detailed picture’

As regional water planning gets underway, and as scientists predict 25% less water in our state over the next 50 years, increased aquifer monitoring is a move that experts like Zemlick say will help prepare the state for a parched future. “It would be huge,” Zemlick says. “We could actually have a conversation about how much water is left and come up with an approach toward sustainability.”

Zemlick began her hydrology career at Sandia National Laboratories, culling water data and analyzing Western states’ water policies with the Water Data Exchange (WaDE). The spirit of that work continues today with the New Mexico Water Data Initiative, the state’s online hub that consolidates data from disparate sources across the state to provide the fullest picture yet of how much water we have, its quality, and how we use it.

But when it comes to groundwater, that picture is still unclear. Zemlick said much of the state’s existing data comes from observations made by commercial and residential well drillers.

“As the material is coming up at different depths, they log what the rock color looks like,” she said. “That, I would say, is 99% of the data we have. The other 1% comes from actual geologists going out into the field, drilling, taking measurements with instruments, sending downhole cameras in. You can really get a detailed picture of what’s happening.”

Optimism in dire times

The governor’s 50 Year Water Action Plan calls for lawmakers to fully fund a Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources program that aims to drill 100 new dedicated monitoring wells and to fully characterize the state’s aquifers by 2032. The additional wells will allow hydrologists and geologists to answer key questions about the state’s underground water.

How porous is the aquifer? What percentage of it holds water versus sand, rock, or other sediment? How fast does water move through the system? How connected are our aquifers? Will pumping water out of one impact the amount of water in another?

“We have a database of those properties, but it’s nowhere near as comprehensive as we would like,” Zemlick says. “We need a lot of data to be able to estimate, ‘We have 100 years of water,’ or ‘We have 500 years of water.’”

Luckily, Zemlick says crises often spur action, and public sentiment has shifted over the past decade to favor investments in planning, data collection, conservation, and sustainability. Public support — and deep commitment from the scientific community — will have to continue for New Mexico to find balance again.

“New Mexicans are creative and resilient, and there are a lot of people in my profession who care deeply about this,” she says. “There is optimism within us, … but my job is to think about the worst-case scenario day in and day out. That is what’s most protective of the resource. I think there are a lot of hard decisions that are going to have to be made, and it’s better if we can come up with solutions before it’s dire.”

"I think there are a lot of hard decisions that are going to have to be made, and it’s better if we can come up with solutions before it’s dire.”

The post Measuring Up New Mexico’s Aquifers appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

WaterTAP – A New Tool For Public Water System Managers

Main Stream New Mexico — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 20:23:31 +0000

WaterTAP – A New Tool For Public Water System Managers

Mar / 2026

Managing a public water system, you are balancing immediate needs like repairs and operations with bigger questions about reliability. Finding the right guidance and funding can be time-consuming, especially when information is spread across multiple programs and resources.

The New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (NMISC) has launched WaterTAP, a free, web-based planning tool to help water systems managers across the state find funding, fix vulnerabilities, and plan for a more reliable water future.

A guided path from questions to next steps

WaterTAP is designed for real-world water work. It brings trusted information into a clear workflow so water system managers can move from “what are our biggest risks?” to “what should we do next?”

Using information specific to each public water system, WaterTAP provides a guided “choose-your-own-path” experience to help:

identify projects, programs and policies that improve reliability
evaluate and prioritize options based on what fits their system and goals
advocate for and get started on their projects to improve resiliency

The tool connects to public water system information to tailor suggested options to each system’s characteristics and needs, and organizes trusted information into a clear workflow that supports decision-making and next steps. To start, you can find your specific system, or you can explore a generic pathway to understand options before diving into system-level details.

“WaterTAP helps New Mexico communities move from uncertainty to action,” said Interstate Stream Commission Director Hannah Riseley-White. “It’s a practical, public-facing tool that puts useful planning support directly in the hands of the water professionals who keep communities running, so they can better navigate today’s challenges and plan for a more secure water future.”

Don’t know where to start? Sara Fox, Senior Water Planner at NMISC, has a few suggestions in her tutorial video linked below.

Supporting regional planning and local decision-making

WaterTAP helps compare and prioritize choices with practical details like estimated time ranges, cost ranges, implementation steps, and links to relevant financial and technical assistance.

The tool supports regional planning and local decision-making by packaging project ideas and next steps for boards, councils, and partners. You can adjust selections, reorder what matters most, and add details to reflect local conditions. Everything exports into a presentation-ready PDF report.

Explore the tool and customize your experience at: watertap.mainstreamnm.org

The post WaterTAP – A New Tool For Public Water System Managers appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

Can weather data help us dodge disaster?

katMainstreamadmin — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:10:36 +0000

Can weather data help us dodge disaster?

A conversation with State Climatologist Dr. Dave DuBois

Feb / 2026

In May 2022, as the largest wildfire in state history crested the hill south of Mora, New Mexico, data from the weather station in the middle of town was worth its weight in water.

During a wildfire, ground-truth reports about wind speed, relative humidity, temperature, and precipitation help protect cities, structures and lives. Every five minutes — until the Calf Canyon-Hermit’s Peak fire took out the area’s power and Internet connection — the Mora-based station updated fire managers, helping them anticipate the fire’s next move so they could decide where to go and what to do next.

That station is part of a network of 215 weather stations across New Mexico, called ZiaMet, that offers a real-time look at weather when it matters most. Data is used in familiar ways, like updating weather forecasts and reporting conditions. It is also used to issue wind warnings that protect truck drivers traversing the gusty flats of Eastern New Mexico. More expansively, it supports federal organizations monitoring drought conditions and arms farmers and ranchers with the documentation they need to apply for drought relief when times get tough.

As New Mexico’s state climatologist, Dr. Dave DuBois has spent the past five years building ZiaMet from the ground up — and, more broadly, working to fill significant weather-data gaps in the fifth-largest state in the nation.

“My whole time in this position, we’ve been in a drought,” he says. “And climate change really tips the odds in favor of severe conditions. We have to have the infrastructure in place, and we have to be ready when things reach that point.”

Shining a light in dark places

DuBois signed on as state climatologist in 2010 after a career that spanned physics, lasers, and meteorology. His focus on data is setting the state up to weather climate change as it intensifies. (Researchers anticipate New Mexico will see a 25% reduction in surface water and groundwater over the next 50 years.)

DuBois is a scientist at heart, but he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. Although he has hired technicians, he still services some of ZiaMet’s more than 200 stations when they need maintenance or repair, climbing towers with the expertise, if not the ease, of a certified lineman.

“I’m over 60 now, you know, so I’ve gotta be careful,” he says, smiling.

As part of his data mission, DuBois is pairing his high-tech weather stations with vital citizen-science programs that serve the dual purposes of data collection and public engagement. CoCoRaHS, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network, is a national program through which anyone with an interest and a bit of inexpensive equipment can help keep track of local precipitation levels.

The network came online in 1998 in Colorado. New Mexico, one of the first states to join up, has up to 600 regular observers. DuBois says he’d love to see that number grow.

“We've got really faithful observers across New Mexico,” he says. “Snow is really hard to measure, and we don’t have the money to have automated stations. It would cost millions and millions of dollars to do that. So, if we have some trained people, whether it's school teachers or retired folks, they're gold, in my opinion.”

CoCoRaHS observers learn how to measure the water content of snow — a vital piece of data that helps researchers predict soil moisture levels and anticipate how much water will feed mountain springs and replenish aquifers come spring. Some observers’ data shines a light in previously dark locations.

“There are some observers that are really critical, that are not even covered by our radar,” DuBois says.

DuBois also serves as director of the New Mexico Climate Center at New Mexico State University. Along with his team, he’s working to build out a data visualization website that tracks both ZiaMet and CoCoRaHS observations — all with an aim of helping folks plan for the “slow-moving disaster” that is climate change.

“What can we glean from the past? How do we move forward?” he says. “We really have to keep at it.”

The post Can weather data help us dodge disaster? appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

Investing in Farm- and Ranch-Led Drought Solutions

katMainstreamadmin — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 18:35:14 +0000

Investing in Farm- and Ranch-Led Drought Solutions

An interview with Sam Fernald of New Mexico State University

Dec / 2025

The image of a multi-million-dollar water treatment facility sitting abandoned and inoperable in the Dominican Republic is still fresh in Sam Fernald’s mind.

A professor of watershed management at New Mexico State University and the director of the state’s Water Resources Research Institute (WRRI), Fernald visited the site in the 1990s while working on an environmental project for the United Nations. The facility was high-tech and modern, the result of decades of academic research and expert engineering. And yet there it stood, its solar panels and other infrastructure scavenged, waiting for local funding and qualified technicians to operate it.

That, Fernald learned, was what happened when well-meaning academics and policymakers instituted solutions from the top down — without considering the interests, needs, resources, or proposed solutions of local communities.

“In the past, they’d go out to communities and give them technology that was completely impossible for them to implement economically and technologically,” Fernald says. “We know now that stakeholders’ perspectives are so important.”

In the 30 years since, Fernald says he’s seen a sea change in how water professionals involve communities in the work of change. And here in New Mexico, community involvement is not only leading to more tenable solutions, it’s also fueling practical and forward-thinking innovations and helping the state — and our farming and ranching industries — prepare for a water-scarce future before it’s too late.

Advancing Solutions with Farmers and Ranchers

Fernald signed onto the WRRI in 2011. The organization — founded in the 1960s — was the first of its kind, a statewide research group devoted entirely to solving problems related to water supply, drought, and how we can share what we have. A few decades after its founding, New Mexico’s WRRI would become the U.S. government’s model for organizing institutes in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and three U.S. territories.

Today, much of WRRI’s work in New Mexico is focused on building real solutions that work for real people. Considering the scientific consensus (that New Mexico will see a 25% reduction in available water over the next 50 years) and the fact that agriculture regularly accounts for about three-quarters of the state's water consumption, Fernald and his teams are researching and putting ideas into practice with farmers and ranchers, all aimed at preventing New Mexico’s agriculture industry (and the livelihoods that rely on it) from drying out in the decades ahead.

Profit margins are often slim for farmers, which makes it hard to invest in new technologies, equipment, or crops. But that doesn’t mean the desire to innovate and respond to changing conditions isn’t there. Farmers, he says, just need support to do it. And that’s where the State of New Mexico is coming in.

In early 2025, the New Mexico Legislature authorized the WRRI and the New Mexico Department of Agriculture to distribute $5 million in grants to farmers to study water resiliency in agriculture. Interest in the project among farmers, Fernald says, was massive - and it's already paying off. “There’s a huge pent-up demand for it,” he says. “We had requests for more than double the amount of funding we had available, and that was just in this first year.”

The program, officially titled the Agricultural Water Resiliency Program, has proved to be the antithesis of that empty, expensive water-treatment facility in the Dominican Republic.

The 41 projects funded so far are wide-ranging, but they share a common goal: to make more efficient use of our scant water resources. Some highlights include:

Modernizing irrigation methods: Traditional irrigation relies heavily on gravity. When farmers open their headgates, it can take days for water to make its way across their fields. A series of research projects is investigating more modern irrigation methods. “If you put on some pipes with gates and valves, you can cover your whole field in a few hours,” Fernald says. “It’s more efficient, and the same water goes farther, and you’re not impacting your agricultural capability.”

Another set of projects is investigating drip and sprinkler systems. Instead of flood irrigation, which has its own benefits for recharging aquifers, these systems use less groundwater to get the same amount of crop yield.

Evaporation reduction from livestock watering: In our arid state, evaporation is a huge water consumer in its own right. (More than 7% of the state’s water use can be attributed to evaporation from reservoirs alone.) A series of research projects is investigating how ranchers can reduce evaporation from stock tanks, from which ranch animals and wildlife drink. “It's just constantly evaporating,” Fernald says. “And in some cases, it'll actually dry up, and the livestock and any other wildlife that use it don't have water.” Shade balls, which are small, black plastic balls that cover the surface of the water, reduce evaporation while still allowing animals to stick their heads in and drink.

Other studies investigate the use of renewables, like solar pumps, that more efficiently manage water supplies with targeted pumping and delivery.

Overall, these projects will give farmers, planners, and researchers hard data about what works — and ultimately, they will inform the state’s regional planners and legislators about which technologies or approaches are most feasible, cost-effective, and save the most water.

Fernald says he hopes legislators will fund the project anew this year. In the meantime, the WRRI has a handful of other research grants in the works as well.

Some investigate water-wise crops like saffron, truffles, pistachios, and Christmas trees as potential alternatives to thirstier mainstays like pecans. Other studies examine ways to retain more water in watersheds and fallow fields without impacting industry.

All of them, Fernald says, involve stakeholders in envisioning a waterwise future in New Mexico.

“We're moving toward a system where there's more of a voice for the regional water users,” he says. “This is more than buy-in. It’s the actual ideas, the creativity, the needs of the people who are actually managing the water.”

The post Investing in Farm- and Ranch-Led Drought Solutions appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

Supporting Acequia Resilience

katMainstreamadmin — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 22:54:52 +0000

Supporting Acequia Resilience

An interview with Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association

Nov / 2025

There is perhaps no better place in New Mexico to experience the joys — and challenges — of community than on the banks of an acequia in early spring.

As days get longer and snowmelt collects in streams and rivers, communities gather on the banks of these centuries-old irrigation canals. The spring reconnects neighbors through the seasonal work of cleaning and repairing this shared waterway, preparing for snow melt to flow through the channels, where parciantes (or “water users”) open headgates on their designated days, diverting water to trees, fields, and gardens. “Seeing water flow from the acequia into a field is a beautiful experience,” says Paula Garcia, executive director of the nonprofit New Mexico Acequia Association and a parciante of several acequias near Mora.

Acequias are where the delicate dance of self-advocacy and compromise ensures that everyone gets their fair share of our most precious resource. But as climate change heats up our corner of the world making water less available, New Mexico’s acequias are getting more and more strained. “Our communities have survived hundreds of years based on customs to share water during times of drought,” says Garcia. However, decades-long drought, climate change, and wildfire damage have presented acequias with multiple challenges at once. “It isn’t enough to keep our water sharing customs alive. We have to adapt to climate disruption and develop greater resilience.”

"Seeing water flow from the acequia into a field is a beautiful experience”

‘A Huge Undertaking’

The system that exists today in New Mexico is a melding of long-held cultural traditions. Acequias are often attributed to Spanish settlement in the 1600s, but the technology has deep roots in Native American methods of agriculture and irrigation, as well as blended techniques and traditions from the mestizo (mixed-blood) settlers from present-day Mexico.

Today, there are an estimated 700+ acequias in New Mexico. Some, like Santa Fe’s Acequia Madre, have rich, well-documented histories. Many are studied and well documented by experts through the adjudication process, which are court proceedings that quantify water rights. Others have never been studied, mapped, or adjudicated and are known mostly to their parciantes.

The New Mexico Acequia Association has been providing education, outreach, and technical assistance to acequias for over three decades. As the threat of drought, wildfires, and flash floods increases, this work is increasingly important. In 2022, the largest fire in the state’s history, the Calf Canyon-Hermit’s Peak fire, raged through San Miguel and Mora counties, devastating homes, farms, and centuries-old acequia systems. Since then, the NM Acequia Association has worked collaboratively with state and federal agencies on disaster recovery.

Natural disasters can devastate these historic waterways and imperil the livelihoods and long-held cultural traditions of their users.

Just after the fires, Garcia says at over 90 acequias, including one that flows through her property, were damaged as burn scar flooding washed ash, sediment, and fire debris downstream. It took three years for Garcia’s acequia to be repaired and the work is ongoing due to recurring flooding. “It takes tremendous resources to restore acequias after a disaster” says Garcia. It requires not just funding and labor, but also technical and legal support to navigate complex state and federal programs like FEMA.

Garcia says she’s hoping the state’s regional water planning process will help stakeholders statewide create resiliency before disaster strikes by identifying and planning for infrastructure needs, and by building a common set of data that everyone can utilize to protect acequia systems.

Despite the risks, Garcia says she’s hopeful about the future. Acequias have survived over the generations, through shifts in farming practices and technologies, through outmigration and intensifying climate change. Perhaps, she wonders, that’s because they’re about more than just water.

“Having a sense of place and a sense of purpose is extremely important for our well-being,” Garcia says. “Acequias can be a big part of that. They foster community at a time when we need community more than ever.”

The post Supporting Acequia Resilience appeared first on Main Stream New Mexico.

English Archives - Main Stream New Mexico

Making Every Desert Downpour Count

Making Every Desert Downpour Count

Farming Through The Worst Drought in 1,200 Years

Farming Through The Worst Drought in 1,200 Years

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Compacts Benefit and Bind Us

Compacts Benefit and Bind Us

Making Tribal Water Rights Right

Making Tribal Water Rights Right

Off the Shelf

Off the Shelf

Measuring Up New Mexico’s Aquifers

Measuring Up New Mexico’s Aquifers

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WaterTAP – A New Tool For Public Water System Managers

WaterTAP – A New Tool For Public Water System Managers

Can weather data help us dodge disaster?

Can weather data help us dodge disaster?

Investing in Farm- and Ranch-Led Drought Solutions

Investing in Farm- and Ranch-Led Drought Solutions

An interview with Sam Fernald of New Mexico State University

Advancing Solutions with Farmers and Ranchers

Supporting Acequia Resilience

Supporting Acequia Resilience