From the President’s Desk: Water Policy Progress and Tipping Points
On April 9, 2024, I witnessed amazing progress in local governments’ approaches to water policies crucial for New Mexico’s future. Bernalillo County elected officials and staff clearly acknowledged in new amendments to a draft high-level plan that New Mexico and the Middle Rio Grande are in an acute water crisis and that water is a Bernalillo County land use constraint. This marks the first official acknowledgment of hydrologic reality in Bernalillo County in a long time.
Bernalillo County Steps Up. Bernalillo County Commission held its second hearing (video for April 9 Zoning meeting available here) regarding the draft 2024 Bernalillo County Comprehensive Plan. The County’s Natural Resources Section manager recommended substantial amendments and additions to the water management chapter, quoting extensively from the Leap Ahead Analyses and the NM Water Policy and Infrastructure Task Force Report. He recommended acceptance of the comments and facts cited in my March 20 letter, including that the Middle Rio Grande consumed 154,000 acre feet of the Lower Rio Grande’s water since 2018.
The County’s sustainability director emphasized the importance of rural communities, farms, and public green spaces as core Bernalillo County values that are crucial to sustainability. Three elected County Commissioners voiced their active support and encouragement.
This progress is significant. I believe the April 9 hearing may mark a tipping point for the Middle Rio Grande’s progress to face its water future.
The Governor and the Legislature Step Back. However, our Governor diverted the attention of the 2024 Legislature in facing New Mexico’s water future. She demanded they authorizing borrowing half a billion dollars to support a private sector badwater treatment scheme. This move, supported by the House Appropriations and Finance Committee chair and vice-chair, failed. The 2024 Legislature stopped the water policy and actions momentum that they created by passing the 2023 Water Security Planning Act. This year, Legislative Finance Committee staff were justifying not recommending funding to implement this landmark new law by saying the work done under the old 1987 law was unproductive. It felt like one step forward and two steps back.
Despite having billions of dollars available, the 2024 Legislature allocated less funding to the Interstate Stream Commission’s water planning program than in 2023. It also appropriated only half of the funds requested to implement the 2019 Water Data Act and nothing to fund drilling aquifer research and monitoring wells allowing us to leverage available federal funding that will soon expire.
Neglected Priorities. Recently, I learned that valued State Engineer professional staff were considering quitting because they lack basic computer hardware capable of running sophisticated hydrology software models and tools. Office of the State Engineer computer servers are incapable of handling the staff’s routine work and are a serious hinderance to their productivity.
Their request for computers didn’t make it into the Governor’s budget, indicating that someone, undoubtedly a budget official, denied it. Who made this decision? Why? My diagnosis: New Mexico State finance officials do not know what they do not know – that water has become an acute problem demanding a solution if our descendants are to have water for their future lives in New Mexico. The bean counters apparently think our water problems are only squabbles. In fact, growing aridity and gross water overuse threatens New Mexico’s existence as home for the young and future generations of New Mexicans.
It’s up to us, as water advocates, to support Bernalillo County’s work and demand that the State of New Mexico do what is right based on the science and data in the authoritative reports previously cited. The perspectives publicly expressed by Bernalillo County elected officials and staff are essential for a thriving future in the Middle Rio Grande. However, the Governor and legislative finance committees’ pursuit of funding for flashy projects while denying state staff the basic tools they require to do their jobs is wrong.
Progress, Momentum and Tipping Points
Despite my disappointment with the 2024 Legislature’s water budget failure and Executive branch’s disinformation, I draw encouragement from Bernalillo County’s responsiveness to truth and data as described above.
Portales officials disregarded the same groundwater research that caused Clovis officials to act.
Building Local Solutions. We must learn from the successes of NM Water Ambassador Dr. Ladona Clayton’s remarkable achievements over the last decade leading the Ogallala Land & Water Conservancy, created by Curry County and the City of Clovis to secure water for their economy by gaining the willing cooperation of many large groundwater pumpers. We need to learn from Portales and Eastern New Mexico University running out of water in 2023 and facing a very grim, water short summer of 2024 and forever, because Portales officials disregarded the same groundwater research that caused Clovis officials to act.
Please thank Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart for insisting on and funding the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources at NM Tech to resume their great water education program for legislators. This highly successful program of the early 2000s is now reestablished, after our former Governor Susanna Martinez stopped it in 2011. Senator Stewart is a fully aware top state elected official. I hope she will demand more attention during the Interim Committee to our water crisis, which will lead to adequate water funding and new or revised statutes identified by the Water Policy and Infrastructure Task Force as state water policy priorities.
Most State Elected Leaders Are Unaware of New Mexico’s Water Crisis. I recently asked a candidate running for reelection to the New Mexico State Senate if they planned to attend the Water Leaders Workshop funded at Ghost Ranch on May 22-24. I have followed their good work as a New Mexico legislator for several terms. They said they did not understand the nuances. To us it is just basic facts of New Mexico’s crisis, such as gross water overuse everywhere and Portales running out of water in 2023, that that they do not know. They committed to attend.
Take Action. I implore everyone to amplify this message. Contact your State Senator and State Representative to urge them to educate themselves about New Mexico’s water challenges by attending the Ghost Ranch workshop.
Additionally, reach out to Legislative Finance Committee/House Appropriation and Finance Committee Chair Nathan Small and Vice-Chair Meredith Dixon. Tell them to fund water basics and to recognize the urgency of the crisis we face. Water cannot wait. The House Appropriations and Finance Committee’s and the Legislative Finance Committee’s long-standing refusals to fund water management and planning and their denial of New Mexico’s acute water crisis must stop.
