Water’s Route 66… and an Aquifer the Size of Lake Superior?
Separating Myth from Reality in Albuquerque’s Water System
If you live in Albuquerque, there’s a good chance some of the water flowing from your tap journeyed quite a ways to get there.
It started out as snow that collected on the slopes of the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado. In early spring, as our part of the world warmed, your tap water dripped and trickled its way into tributaries of the Colorado River, building speed as it joined other, larger flows along the way.
Then, about 25 miles outside Chama, New Mexico, something rather marvelous happened to your water. It found its way beneath the towering mountains of the Continental Divide near the Colorado-New Mexico border, rushing through a series of human-made downhill tunnels. This engineering marvel, known as the San Juan-Chama Project, is a kind of Route 66 for water — a fast track to the high desert. Constructed in the 1960s and ’70s, it delivers essential water resources, which otherwise would have emptied into the Pacific Ocean or the Sea of Cortez, to people in cities, pueblos, and rural areas in parched Northern New Mexico.
Of course this is just one of the ways water journeys to your tap. Albuquerque, like other large Western cities, can’t rely on a single source of water — especially as climate change promises to reduce both surface water and groundwater supplies by about 25 percent over the next 50 years.
This is the story of Albuquerque’s water — where it comes from, how it’s used, and how, together, we are making it last.
The Truth About Albuquerque’s Aquifer
Today, more than half of Albuquerque’s drinking water comes from the San Juan-Chama Project, and the rest comes from underground. But that wasn’t always the case. Until 2008, the Duke City relied entirely on its storied aquifer.
Albuquerque’s aquifer is the stuff of legend. In the mid-20th Century, geologists and city planners thought it held as much water as Lake Superior. And so, perhaps understandably, burqueños consumed it as such, flushing high-flow toilets with abandon and watering enough lawns to transform Albuquerque into a veritable high-desert oasis.
In the words of then-Mayor Martin Chavez, “If you think you have an infinite resource, using all you want is not wasteful.”
Then, in August 1993, the United States Geological Survey published a study that changed everything. Not only was Albuquerque’s aquifer much smaller than originally thought, the city was using water 2-3 times faster than the aquifer could recharge, resulting in drastic drop-offs of the aquifer’s level — 140 feet in some areas — in just a few year’s time.
“That was an aha moment,” says Mark Kelly, the water resources division manager for the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority. “We realized we needed to get more serious about conservation, and we needed to diversify our portfolio of water sources.”
The answer, of course, was staring the city in the face. The San Juan-Chama Project had come online in 1971. At the time, many folks in Albuquerque considered the project a boondoggle. With such a vast aquifer, why did the city need more water?
In 2004, construction began on the San Juan-Chama Drinking Water Project, a $450 million infrastructure investment that delivered San Juan-Chama water from the Rio Grande River to a water treatment facility in Albuquerque. Since the project came online in late 2008, Albuquerque’s aquifer has recovered by 40 feet in some places, Kelly says.
‘A Leader in the West’
But additional availability alone can’t save Albuquerque’s water future. Conservation and planning are equally critical. Despite a slow start in the aftermath of that shocking 1993 USGS report, Albuquerque residents and city leaders have risen to the occasion.
In 1995, the city set a goal of reducing per-capita water consumption from about 250 to 175 gallons per person per day (GPCD). In the nearly 30 years since, the city has met and exceeded that goal, decreasing consumption to about 125 GPCD.
“We’ve conserved very well,” Kelly says. “If you look at our GPCD, we’re a leader in the West, and that’s all thanks to the customers and the efficacy of our conservation program.”
The Water Authority’s current goal is to reach 110 GPCD by 2037. Kelly admits it’s getting harder and harder to find ways to reduce our use, in part because ongoing outreach campaigns and rebate programs that incentivize swapping out high-use appliances for greener models have been so effective. To get there, the Water Authority is working hard to promote xeriscaping and the elimination of “nonfunctional” turf grass — that is, grass that’s purely ornamental.
“A lot of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked,” he says. “It’s hard to find a high-flow toilet to replace anymore.”
In 2016 the Water Authority developed Water 2120, a plan that envisions Albuquerque’s water future. In a bid to ensure a stable availability of water despite an uncertain future, the plan prioritizes ongoing conservation and education, water reuse, and Aquifer Storage and Retrieval (in which unused surface water is stored below ground for future use). The plan is set to be refreshed next year to account for updated climate-change modeling and population-growth projections.
For Kelly, Water 2120 is both a reminder of the need to conserve and evidence of the Water Authority’s commitment to a sustainable future. It should serve as both a call to action and a comfort — because the idea that our water outlook is dire simply isn’t true.
“The public has worked hard to conserve water,” he says. “And yes, we should be concerned about drought and climate change, but no one needs to stop showering or anything like that. We want to make sure the public trusts us and realizes we do have a good plan for utilizing our water resources.”
Public engagement was a cornerstone of Water 2120, just as it is a cornerstone of New Mexico’s regional water planning process. To join your neighbors in planning for New Mexico’s water future, visit the get involved page.
