By STACI MATLOCK, The New Mexican
September 17, 2007
Officials explore ways to keep taps flowing
Adults in the Santa Fe area can rest assured water will flow from their taps in the next decade. But water for their children and grandchildren through the century is less certain.
Officials estimate supplies can meet demand for the next 10 to 15 years with water from wells, the Rio Grande and reservoirs. After that, the city and county must find new, steady water sources.
The city and county of Santa Fe, like the rest of the West, are grappling with major challenges in ensuring water supply and keeping it affordable for the next few generations. Drought, climate change and competition for water with farmers, endangered species and other communities are major factors.
Ultimately, water is the key to local food production, healthy ecosystems, growing cities and robust economies.
Water managers are looking to boost supplies through a variety of means, everything from treating brackish groundwater to storing surface water by injecting it into aquifers. "We're not standing around saying, 'God, I hope it rains and snows,' " said State Engineer John D'Antonio. "We have to say we know water is going down. Then we have to have an emergency plan in place for when water declines."
Dry times
Drought is no stranger to Santa Fe or the rest of New Mexico. But, D'Antonio said, "one of the things about drought is it is such a slow, evolving disaster. We've managed to dodge the bullet so far."
In between dry times, D'Antonio said, "people get complacent."
Tree ring studies indicate severe 10- to 25-year droughts happened multiple times in the Southwest in the last few centuries. But the last 100 years has been a relatively wet century for New Mexico, and it is the period on which the assumptions underlying most of the state’s water agreements are based.
Archaeologists theorize that past droughts might have prompted Indian cultures in the Santa Fe area to move on. At least four large pueblos once dotted the Galisteo Basin south of Santa Fe. A wet period in the 1200s encouraged farming, and, over time, these "super" pueblos swelled to house an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 residents, according to Eric Blinman, director of the Office of Archaeological Studies at the Museum of New Mexico.
The Galisteo Basin pueblos built simple dirt reservoirs to collect runoff, potentially to supply drinking water, Blinman said. "We don't know exactly when those reservoirs were built, but it would be fascinating to excavate them and find out if they were built to deal with a declining water supply," he said. "From an archaeological perspective, what we see is a strong effort to maintain the status quo up until the point when that is simply not possible."
Modern engineering — bigger reservoirs and deeper wells — has helped New Mexico survive dry periods. But that could have delayed the time when residents will have to adapt to severe water shortages, Blinman said.
A long, wet period in the 1970s and ’80s coincided with the biggest population jump in Middle Rio Grande’s cities. Hundreds of wells were drilled. Thousands of lots were platted in the Middle Rio Grande for future housing with little thought for where the water would come from.
It set the stage for a scenario that a former state engineer, Steve Reynolds, predicted 50 years ago. Cities and agriculture could grow, he said, but they would have to pay later as their well pumping began lowering the water table and shrinking river flows.
In the last seven years, hydrologists found both Santa Fe and Albuquerque had pumped enough to create cones of depression in their aquifers, causing water to flow underground away from the Rio Grande.
Changing climate, growing population
Climate change is a wild card in the state's water future.
While Santa Fe's and the state's water supply is always variable, the steady warming caused by climate change creates new threats of less snow and higher temperatures. Precipitation could come down more often as rain than snow.
Winter snowpacks in the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan mountains are a major factor in the area's water supplies. Any decrease in snowpack in those mountains affects flows in both the Rio Grande and San Juan rivers, which the city and county increasingly will rely on for water. Both expect water diverted from the Rio Grande through the planned Buckman Direct Diversion to help serve utility customers for the next 40 years.
But the impacts of climate change weren't included in proposed Indian water-rights settlements or in decades-old interstate water compacts that dictate how New Mexico manages its water. Not enough was known about climate change or historic droughts when those deals were made, said Esteván Lopez, director of the Interstate Stream Commission.
Blinman wonders if everyone is fully prepared for the consequences of climate change. "The climate is constantly changing, and the changes occur rapidly, like within a decade. That's not including impacts from human activities," Blinman said. "It's kind of like having a cold that doesn't go away and realizing it’s the plague. You really don't want to believe it is the plague until you are deep into it, where denial no longer works."
In the last century, New Mexico's population grew from 330,000 residents to 1.9 million.
Most of that growth has been in the cities from Santa Fe to Los Lunas, along the Rio Grande. Combined with the water needs of power plants and agriculture, the river's supplies are stretched thin.
Claudia Borchert, the water project manager for Santa Fe's water utility division, said water staff members have tried to think through the worst-case scenarios involving drought and climate change. The staff members have attempted to figure out how, during severe droughts, they will balance three water sources: the Buckman Direct Diversion, water from Santa Fe Canyon reservoirs and well water.
The county also plans to seesaw between water from the Rio Grande and wells to supply water during dry times.
But the city's and county's current plans rely on acquiring water rights from elsewhere in the state. They'll compete with other towns in the basin, including Albuquerque, Rio Rancho and Los Lunas, to buy up limited water rights.
Less than a fourth of the water rights in New Mexico have been legally finalized in court. Former State Engineer Tom Turney said a few years ago that the lack of adjudications means water transfers are "highly questionable."
The city and county are facing challenges to their water transfer requests from Isleta Pueblo, acequia users and even each other. While the protests won't necessarily stop the transfers, they further drive up the cost of water.
Endangered species
Whatever plans farmers and cities draw up to ensure their own water supplies, a federal endangered-species ruling limits what they can do in the Rio Grande basin.
Environmental groups sued in the late 1990s to protect water flows for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow, even in times of drought. The groups won, forcing cities and other water users along the Rio Grande to take into account the silvery minnow’s needs to keep flows in the river.
Janet Jarratt, a Los Lunas dairy farmer who is part of a group trying to resolve minnow issues without affecting other water users, said an additional 50,000 acre-feet of water is needed for the minnow.
Someone will have to give up water to make that happen. "Santa Fe loves endangered species," she said. "But if cities continue to grow, it isn't just the farms that will go down. It is the endangered species."
And fallowing farms alone to come up with more water for cities creates a double whammy for struggling species. "The farms are what keep the species here," said Jarratt, who has hosted Audubon tours to see migrating birds eating in her fields. "You can't have wildlife living just along the levees."
Patching it together
Em Hall, a former staff member in the State Engineer's Office and a water historian, is surprised at how long New Mexico has patched together water supplies. "I've been predicting disaster for years, that the wheels are going to come off any time," Hall said. "But they don't."
Santa Fe city and county are mandating conservation, using treated effluent to water parks and golf courses, and requiring land developers to provide water rights for their projects.
In spite of the efforts, Hall said, "at some point, we will run out of water or run out of legal rights. Then, it won’t be patchable."
Some people, though, think a lot can be done to stretch water supplies. Blinman, the archaeologist, attended a colloquium on climate change in Greenland in June, where participants discussed the human ability to adapt.
"If everyone in Santa Fe tomorrow adopted a naval shower (wet down, soap up, wash off), it would cut water use from showers to 10 percent of what we use today," Blinman said. "In some sense, the joy of our ability to adapt is that we have so much room in our expectations that we may be able to put off anything that we would consider a collapse. But only if we change our expectations throughout the community."
Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.
