The 2022 NM Water Policy and Infrastructure Task Force recommendation 2.2 calls for NM to "elevate regional water planning in the face of increasing water scarcity to promote equity and build capacity to govern and manage water."  See below and the Task Force Report, Appendix B.  The Water Advocates then drafted a bill to implement the task force strategy A, to replace the 1987 law, which has served its purposes.  The State Engineer then simplified the Water Advocates' draft and endorsed the less prescriptive version as his agency's bill.

The 2023 Legislature unanimously passed the new, robust regional water resilience planning and implementation law (Article 72-14A NMSA 1978).  Across the state, regions and the communities within them have different water supplies and water uses.  Most have one thing in common:  current water demands are more than diminished and declining water supplies can sustain.

The new law requires the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission to create a new statewide program of regional water resilience planning, designate the planning regions, and establish the planning program design and details through rule-making and guidelines.  ISC will stand-up this program this year and the next.

The law empowers state agencies and directs the ISC to determine the criteria that a state-funded regional water resilience planning entity must meet.  Similarly the ISC will determine the criteria and procedures for state funding, the planning process, and the content and approval process for completed draft plans,

The law empowers each region to establish regional water management values, use the best available data and models provided by a consortium of state agencies, identify and evaluate policies and projects to increase the resilience of the region and its communities to declining water supplies, and prioritize those projects for implementation funding.

The law authorizes the work.  It lets us mark most of the first sentence of the Action, and the first sentence of Strategy A, below, as complete. We are authorized to role up our sleeves, work together, get the program fleshed out and ready, and then do the hard work of determining what we can agree on to increase our water resilience in a more arid future with significantly less water.