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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
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  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Drained New Mexico Tries to Stay Afloat as Demands Rise and Water Levels Fall
  • Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 23:23:00 -0700




Santa Fe New Mexican
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Drained New Mexico Tries to Stay Afloat as Demands Rise and Water Levels Fall

By BEN NEARY
The New Mexican

Sunday, November 02, 2003

In eastern New Mexico, some farmers haven't seen water in more than a year.

In western New Mexico, power companies are scrambling to secure river
water to cool the generating plants that provide the bulk of the state's
electrical power.

And on the Rio Grande, the river that flows through the heart of New
Mexico, reservoir levels are so low that regardless of how much snow falls
this winter, an interstate compact will bar the state from capturing
enough runoff next spring to allow farmers in the Middle Valley to grow a
full crop.

Water managers at the state, local and federal levels say conditions are
the worst they've ever seen. Meanwhile, as recent temperatures set record
highs, the National Weather Service said the state could be in for another
warm, dry winter.


'The worst that I've seen'

In most years, water from Conchas Lake in far eastern New Mexico flows
through a canal to the 41,397-acre Arch Hurley Irrigation District around
Tucumcari. The 580 farmers in the district are accustomed to using the
water to grow hay, wheat and other crops.

This year, Conchas Lake was too low to supply any water to the canal.

"Last year, we had 3 inches of water. Normally the allocation is around 18
inches," said Wayne Cunningham, district manager. "So we haven't had water
on this project since June of 2002.

"When you have some water, you can apply conservation measures, but when
you don't have any water, you can't even do that," Cunningham said. "We're
at the mercy of weather conditions themselves. It's a very, very difficult
situation that we have here.

"I've spent most of my life dealing with water, and this is the worst that
I've seen."

The irrigation district's members must pay assessments for their acreage
whether the water flows or not.

"If you or I didn't have a paycheck for going on two years, you can see
what the economic effect would be,"
Cunningham said. "It's drastic, and people are hurt very deeply
economically."

>From his vantage point, Cunningham sees a disturbing trend: The drought is
spreading west, across the rest of the state.

The Elephant Butte Irrigation District on the Rio Grande has provided a
full allocation of water to its members every year from 1980 to 2002,
Cunningham said. The district provided 36 inches of water per acre in each
of those years, but this year it provided only 8 inches.

"Man can't do too much about the problem," Cunningham said. "It's strictly
about the Lord God Almighty himself."


Draining Elephant Butte

Shortages at Elephant Butte Reservoir affect more than the delivery of
water for chile and pecan crops downstream; the reservoir is critical to
New Mexico's water management.

Article 7 of the Rio Grande Compact -- an agreement among New Mexico,
Colorado, Texas and Mexico -- specifies that when storage at Elephant
Butte is less than 400,000 acre-feet, New Mexico can't store water in
reservoirs built after 1929.

Storage at Elephant Butte fell below that level last summer and hovers
around 160,000 acre-feet.

State officials early this year made a "relinquishment" deal with Texas,
which allowed New Mexico to capture runoff in upstream reservoirs in
exchange for releasing the same amount of the state's water from Elephant
Butte. Under the agreement, New Mexico released 122,500 acre-feet from
Elephant Butte this year and plans to release up to 95,000 acre-feet next
year.

While the deal gave New Mexico the right to capture some water in
reservoirs upstream, it came at a high cost.

Boaters and businessmen around Elephant Butte protested this spring when
Gov. Bill Richardson announced the deal. The lake's falling water level
threatens fishing and recreation and area property values and businesses.

Even though water levels at Elephant Butte are the lowest they've been in
decades, they're likely to fall further next year.

"We anticipate that, given the relinquishment that we've already done,
Elephant Butte could be at very low levels, on the order of 50,000
acre-feet or less," said Estevan Lopez, New Mexico interstate-stream
engineer. His office is responsible for meeting the state's
compact-delivery mandates.

Beyond the dramatic effect on Elephant Butte itself, the Article 7
restrictions against upstream storage have grave implications for water
management up and down the Rio Grande.

New Mexico isn't getting out of Article 7 restrictions anytime soon, said
Ken Maxey, Albuquerque area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation,
which operates Elephant Butte Reservoir and nearby Caballo Reservoir.

"Our take right now is that it would be virtually impossible for those
restrictions to be lifted next year," Maxey said.


Little room to maneuver

Irrigators downstream from Elephant Butte -- including the Elephant Butte
Irrigation District and irrigators in Texas and Mexico -- have rights to
about 790,000 acre-feet a year. While New Mexico wants to fill Elephant
Butte to get out from under the compact restriction against upstream
storage, those downstream irrigators can call for water to be released to
them as soon as it's available.

"We would expect that even if we had a massive snowfall and runoff next
year, virtually all of that water would end up being released out of
Elephant Butte to meet those district demands," Maxey said. "It will take
quite a number of average to above-average years of snowpack to bring that
water level in Elephant Butte back to 400,000 acre-feet or more."

Dick Kreiner, acting chief of operations with the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers in Albuquerque, paints a picture just as grim.

"It's pretty damned low," Kreiner said of New Mexico's reservoir storage.
"It hasn't been this low for a long, long time. Actually, the Rio Grande
Basin is just now being affected by the drought that's hit the Pecos and
the Canadian. Those folks haven't hardly had any water in the past two or
three years."

Low reservoir storage leaves New Mexico little room to maneuver, Kreiner
said.

"We're in lousy shape because we've exhausted all of our reservoir
storage," he said. "The thing that has got us through the last few years
is reservoir storage. That's exhausted; we're in Article 7. And the
state's not in a good position for another dry year."

It would take at least two years of above-average snowpack to fill
Elephant Butte above 400,000 acre-feet, said Kreiner, whose agency
operates several reservoirs on the Rio Grande. "Until they get there,
there's limited flexibility. Without that flexibility to store water
upstream, you're just passing inflow."

"Passing inflow" means that even if heavy snowpack in the northern
mountains feeds upstream reservoirs next spring, New Mexico isn't entitled
to capture more than what it can release from Elephant Butte.


Little water for farmers

Water supplies for Santa Fe and Albuquerque won't be immediately affected.
Both cities store their own water in upstream reservoirs and pump
groundwater when necessary.

But farmers along the Rio Grande will be hit hard as long as New Mexico
remains under Article 7 restrictions.

The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District provides water to thousands of
farmers between Cochití and Socorro. With Article 7 restrictions, the
district can't capture much water in upstream reservoirs for irrigation
next summer.

"So they have to rely on rainfall to get them through the summer," Kreiner
said. "You're back down to natural-flow conditions."

The 46,000 acre-feet allocated for the district next year by the state's
relinquishment deal won't be enough, said Subhaa Shah, director of the
Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. The district has used more than 10
times that amount in recent years.

"We just do not have sufficient supply ... to last next year," Shah said.

He wasn't around in the 1950s, Shah said, but conditions were similar
during that prolonged drought.

"This is the worst I've been seeing it," Shah said. "We would have to
survive tough times ahead of us. We have to survive with the natural flows
of the Rio Grande."

Shah couldn't predict how many farmers in the Middle Rio Grande
Conservancy District will see their crops decline next year, because that
depends on water available in storage.

"I'm sure it's going to be a 25 to 50 percent loss to the farmers,
depending on how long this is going to last," Shah said. "People are kind
of concerned about the future."

Lopez, the interstate-stream engineer, also couldn't estimate what the
water shortage for Middle Rio Grande farmers would cost the state.

"I can't really address the economic effects other than there will be
economic effects," Lopez said. "Many of the farmers might be assessing
whether they even want to put in crops at all. That could be a prudent
thing for them to be assessing."


Desperate for diversion

In addition to New Mexico's natural snowpack, the state receives water
from Colorado through the San Juan/Chama Diversion Project. A tunnel
system brings water from the headwaters of the San Juan River in southern
Colorado into reservoirs on the Chama River, which joins the Rio Grande
near Española.

Cities including Santa Fe and Albuquerque have rights to San Juan/Chama
water. Both cities plan to build facilities to take their portions
directly from the Rio Grande.

The project has a "firm yield" of 92,000 acre-feet a year. That means the
project is designed to provide that much water each year regardless of the
vagaries of weather.

The diversion project has produced its firm yield in recent years, but
only by drawing down reservoir storage. Delivery has been far below
92,000 acre-feet in the past two years.

Colorado delivered about 70,000 acre-feet this year and about 76,000*
acre-feet the year before, Maxey said.

"We're comfortable that we can make at least one more year of water
delivery out of that project," he said. After next year, however,
deliveries will depend entirely on weather.

Lopez agrees with that assessment.

"If San Juan/Chama water were to continue to diminish, we might be to a
point where there's virtually no upstream storage," he said. "We might be
in a position where there's a lot of people with no water to use."


Navajo water crunch

Other factors besides weather could reduce delivery of San Juan/Chama
water to Santa Fe and other Rio Grande contractors.

Navajo Reservoir on the San Juan River is lower than when it was first
filled, said Bill Hume, director of policy and
strategic planning at the governor's office.

A head gate at Navajo Reservoir draws water for the Navajo Irrigation
Project. If the reservoir falls below the gate, the irrigation project
would be left dry.

Congress specified that the San Juan/Chama project share with the Navajo
Irrigation Project in droughts. The Navajo Nation has asked the U.S.
Department of Interior to cut back on San Juan/Chama deliveries to
increase water for its project, but no action has been taken.

Meanwhile, the extremely low storage level in Navajo Reservoir prompted
the Bureau of Reclamation to announce plans to cut the minimum release
from Navajo Dam down to 250 cubic feet per second beginning in early
November. That's about half the normal rate for winter releases, and such
low levels are bad news for the blue-ribbon trout fishery
below the lake.

But Hume says low water levels on the San Juan have other, perhaps more
dire, implications than the effect on trout fishing.

"A big, looming problem for New Mexico on the San Juan," Hume said, "is
those two big power plants that rely on the San Juan for water."


Sharing the San Juan

The 1,800-watt San Juan Generating Station generates about 60 percent of
New Mexico's power, said Amy Miller, external communications manager for
Public Service Company of New Mexico. The nearby Four Corners Power Plant,
operated by Public Service Company of Arizona, likewise relies on the San
Juan River for cooling water.

The state brokered a shortage-sharing agreement among PNM and other San
Juan water users this year that precluded the need to cut off junior
water-rights holders. Under the agreement, the San Juan Generating Station
agreed to cut back from 24,200 acre-feet to 22,000 acre-feet, Miller said.

In order to ensure an adequate supply, PNM contracted to buy up to 8,000
acre-feet of water from the Jicarilla Apache Tribe, but the company hasn't
used the water yet. The contract might be renewed for two more years,
Miller said.

"We feel good about where things stand right now," Miller said. "But ...
the water shortage is not going to go away in the Four Corners area or New
Mexico in general."

PNM is working with Los Alamos National Laboratory and others to
investigate the possibility that groundwater leftover from natural-gas
production could be used to cool power plants.

"This is just another reason for us to look at alternative solutions, like
wind power," Miller said.

The Four Corners Power Plant uses between 15,000 and 20,000 acre-feet a
year for cooling, plant manager David Saliba said. Thanks to the
shortage-sharing agreement, the plant is in good shape for this year, and
Saliba is optimistic about next year.

His company, like PNM, has contracted to buy water from the Jicarillas if
necessary, Saliba said.

Although San Juan water users haven't agreed on how much water each will
use in 2004, Saliba said other water users might agree to absorb greater
cutbacks if necessary to keep the power plants functioning.

Federal forecasters are calling for snowfall to be 75 percent of the norm
in the San Juan Mountains of Southern Colorado, which drain into the
reservoir, he said. If that holds true, the power plant will have enough
water next year under the proposed shortage-sharing agreement.

"Now if the drought gets very, very severe ..., if the snowpack ballpark
was maybe 25 percent of normal, then there might not be sufficient flow in
the San Juan River for our needs," Saliba said.

The state is watching the situation on the San Juan closely, said Hume,
Richardson's planning director.

"That is a major industrial water use in that corner of the state that
could be majorly impacted in the coming year," Hume said. "There's a big
difference between shutting off nearly half the power in the state and
cutting off some farmers who presumably have experienced this before, or
their parents have."


Preparing for the worst

New Mexico can't fabricate more water out of thin air, but it can prepare
for more of the same or worse conditions, experts say, by making the
public understand what's going on.

New Mexico received extraordinary precipitation over the past few decades,
and that gave many newcomers a dangerously inaccurate view of how dry the
state is, water managers say.

New Mexico clearly is returning to a drier, more normal condition, said
Kreiner of the Army Corps of Engineers.

"If you look back through tree rings and the hydrologic records, these
things happen on a regular basis," he said. "From a societal standpoint,
we've got to learn how to deal with them. We've all got to conserve water."

Maxey agrees: "People should be concerned and involved. Conditions are
serious and have every likelihood to get more serious."

The state faces a difficult balancing act, Hume said.

"We're going to have to figure out how to get water to the must-do users
-- I'm thinking about the municipalities and people," Hume said. "And do
what we can for our agricultural users. And we don't have the luxury of
ignoring our environmental users.

"People like to think of this as drought," he said. "But looking at the
long-term chart, it's more like we're sliding back toward disastrous
normalcy."

*Tentative correction from 6,000 in the original print edition
version--Web Team



Posted: Monday, November 03, 2003
by: Kathleene Parker

A few years ago, I stood before the Jemez y Sangre de Cristo H2O council
and told them that, in drought, we cannot count on San Juan-Chama water.
Ben Neary's article hits the nail on the head, even now, early in drought
San Juan-Chama water is almost gone, in part because in drought the Four
Corners is even drier than Northern New Mexico and, in drought, the
Navajos get San Juan-Chama water if they want to take it; yet, our leaders
and boom boosters--too often one and the same--depict San Juan-Chama water
as a virtual panacea even as they invite the world to New Mexico and as
our country refuses to address the fact that we are the only developed
nation that is still growing--and boy are we growing, at rates that will
nearly double our numbers (unless we wake up soon) by about 2050, and even
as the New Mexico water plan blithely, and wrongly, postulates we are
about to stop growing. But the fault is ours for not being informed. It is
one thing to condemn growth and development locally, but it is ludicrous
to do so without addressing that it is happening because of national
(immigration and open borders) trends and foreign policy, i.e. Pres. Twig
recently cut all U.S. funds to international family planning!!!







  • [Livingontheland] Drained New Mexico Tries to Stay Afloat as Demands Rise and Water Levels Fall, Tradingpost, 11/04/2003

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