Unsettled Waters: A blog on water rights in the American West

So it is back to water this week. A colleague and I have to write a public piece, for a newsletter circulating in northern New Mexico, about a recent decision to deny a water rights transfer (or "conveyance") along an acequia, and from an acequia to a dry promontory dividing two drainages, between Chupadero and Rio En Medio. Without too many details, the applicant is a famous land-owner in Santa Fe and has several local restaurants to his name. He also owns a small wine-shop, which I guess I should now boycott given what I know. His request to "move" water rights downstream, along an acequia, to a different tract of land wouldn't be so problematic if he acknowledged the governance and oversight of the local acequia association. But he wants no part of the acequia as a political institution he'd have to participate in, he just wants the water. Sorry buddy, but you live in New Mexico, and it's a package deal. His ludicrous request is to transfer surface wa...

I've been distracted this week, and probably in the next as well, by having to produce a piece for a journal, Transformations , dealing with a course I'll teach when I go back next year to regular duties. The theme of my "Political Ecology of the Southwest" course will be "Atomic Borderlands" in the fall of 2010 and I'm writing a theoretical-pedagogical piece on how to teach the (end of the) Earth without depressing everyone including myself. So apart from a discussion with Frances Levine (Director, Palace of the Governors ) regarding her 1990 piece in NMHR on the effects of adjudication in the state, this week is about the creation of destruction. Friday, a lecture on the development of the atomic bomb in Albuquerque, and an early Saturday morning departure from the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History to go to the actual Trinity testing site in southern New Mexico. They organize a tour every year, including a "live explosion" on ...

Yesterday, I had the good fortune to chat with Darcy Bushnell who heads the Utton Ombudsman Program at the University of New Mexico. Specifically, she is tasked with outreach to folks dealing with water rights adjudications as executed by the Office of the State Engineer in New Mexico. Their office "does not provide legal advice," in Bushnell's words, but does offer some guidance on steps and what to anticipate next as part of the adjudication process . She related how some people react with such fear that they won't even open their mail from the State Engineer's office, worrying that it might be bad news. In the afternoon, I met with Denise Bleakly, a fellow geographer who works as a GIS resource specialist at one of the national labs in Albuquerque. Denise has been doing independent volunteer work up in Embudo and Dixon, helping parciantes map their acequias with GPS units and hopes to provide some basic outline and base maps for the community to use soon. I...

So I've signed up for the Acequia Hydrology symposium and field tour on October 21 & 22 to learn a bit more about the relationships between surface irrigation and natural stream channels, much of it gleaned from experimental research done at the NMSU Alcalde Field Station where the Rio Grande leaves its steep canyon and emerges into the relatively flatter area around Embudo and Alcalde. I have read much of the work by Guldan, Fernald, Ortiz , and many others working out of NMSU - it's refreshing to see this work see the light of day. It shows that "water resources" experts and civil engineers have a lot to contribute, and a lot to learn, towards the impacts and after-effects of surface irrigation technologies that aren't directed by 30" pipe. Listening to local knowledge makes sense for a lot of reasons, in this case. What will be of interest is how the socio-economic picture of acequias, and their current challenges given the difficult of small-scale ...

Yesterday I had the chance to speak to Estevan Arellano, a former journalist, a parciante on the Acequia Junta y Cienega, that uses the Rio Embudo close to its juncture (hence "junta") to the Rio Grande. For those who don't know him, Arellano is the editor and translator of "Ancient Agriculture" (originally published in 1513 in Spain) and has been active in acequia and community organization efforts for years. While parciantes on the AJyC are paying fairly high dues, it is a self-levied tax to keep the system operating, the banks cleared, and the amount of phreatophytes to a minimum to ensure some minimal flows for irrigation use. Only two folks out of 34 are 'delinquent' on their dues, one of whom is an absentee land-owner, and this provoked much discussion about the problems of the post-modern acequia. With retirees buying up former irrigated land at $50-100k/acre, they desire the aesthetic product of a managed landscape without the effort needed to a...

With a quick excursion this afternoon, I went to the famous Bridge at Otowi, which is right next to the now more important Otowi Gauge. This measurement device, for Rio Grande flow, is the spatial "chokepoint" for the Rio Grande Compact between New Mexico and Texas (see photo). A certain percentage of the flow at Otowi, has to then move on (in theory, undisturbed) to the Texas border. (Photo 1: Otowi gauge, just south of the Rt 502 bridge, along the Rio Grande). That this small measurement device, a technology for "commensuration" as Espeland would put it (see today's earlier post), would represent inter-state politics at its best and worst, is just a small reflection of the scaled politics of water. For contrast, during this same drive, I went to R. En Medio and Chupadero, two small villages just northeast of Tesuque, that share a splitter box on the Rio En Medio (see August post). Here, everything is scaled to the local dynamics of the water, the community...

I don't know how this book escaped my attention for so long but Wendy N. Espeland's "The Struggle for Water" discusses the dam that never was (Orme), in central Arizona, and how the Yavapai fought its construction with an unusal blend of allies. Her use of commensuration as one of the facets of how measurement "rationality" is critical to water management is quite interesting, even if perhaps over-repeated. But it does present an interesting framework for understanding adjudication in its current context; taking a system that works (autonomous irrigation) and making it more commensurate (quantified) with prior appropriation and American jurisprudence. We'll see how this pans out in the long run.

At an interesting set of mini-lectures last night, in Taos, UNM's Sylvia Rodriguez and Enrique Lamadrid were joined by journalist and agriculture-enthusiast Estevan Arellano, at the UNM-Taos campus just south of town, to discuss acequias in a new series on Agua y Cultura. If there was something of note, it's that the two academics seemed more hopeful, more in optimistic key, than the veteran parciante from Embudo (Arellano). Lamadrid discussed some of the recent summer trips to Mexico, where they went to rural Chihuahua, places like Aldama in the Allende Valley, to find the roots of New Mexican agricultural and irrigation practices. Sylvia, of course, emphasized the local dimension in Taos but did connect them to the autonomous irrigation communities that can be found in hundreds of places around the globe. Cue Arellano, who simply started reciting a few grim statistics from both acequia areas and the Pueblos themselves nearby, that few are planting anymore. Few parciantes are ...

A drive and visit to the South Valley yesterday was worthwhile. Melanie S has a friend who lives in the SV and knows James Maestas personally, the latter being the principal character in the rejuvenation and re-creation of the South Valley Acequias (Association). James, with Tom's help, recounted how long it had taken to reform the organization, if not a new ditch route due to an uncooperative neighbor, with some help and support from the NMAA. One of the aspects that was notable was the amount of free-riding bad behavior displayed by folks more interested in the total net worth of their water right, rather than just being a decent neighbor, and the role played by a local water broker. The dynamics of the acequia-MRGCD relationship will be one tough ball of yarn to unravel, I suspect, given the district's attitude about water resources under 'their' jurisdiction. More later...now, we're off to the Mora and Gallinas Valleys, then the Jicarita 'bypass' up th...

As I continue to make contacts here in New Mexico, I'm struck by how the research process has completely changed even in my life-time, working from index cards (as recently as 10 years ago) to the e-mails I get now from folks who would have been, at one time, "informants" without digital access...it makes it easier to stay in touch, but in other ways it takes the fun out of the process if I don't have to drive on a dirt road for an hour or four to get to their homes. But I realize this is just pith-helmet research nostalgia...and I'm over it. Perhaps the indirect result of this overall change is that the stakes for research ethics have also been raised - our results are easier to find, easier to question, if not easier to contest (yet). But that is a welcome change.

I will be visiting with some folks from the South Valley Acequia Association next week in order to see how they plan on responding to both the MRGCD and the OSE's plans to start pre-adjudication of the section of the Rio Grande that runs through Albuquerque, though technically MRGCD manages the water between Cochiti Dam and Socorro, near Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. Since the establishment of the conservancy district in the 1920s (1925 to be precise), they have had great leeway in the management and governance of water in between the two points (Cochiti and Bosque del A), and have had sometimes tense relationships with the State Engineer's office in Santa Fe. Next Thursday and Friday we'll be in Taos, where there is a lecture/public forum on acequias with Drs. Lamadrid, Rodriguez (both at UNM) and Juan Estevan Arellano (Embudo, NM), and I hope to catch up with Fred Waltz as well. More later...

An interesting symposium I just might have to attend and organized by the folks at New Mexico State University on acequia hydrology. That's all for today...

A quick update - I had two productive meetings today in Albuqueruque. First, I met Melanie Stansbury , a Cornell grad student who is finishing up a doctoral dissertation on the Aamodt settlement; it sounds fascinating, and it also has an applied, conflict-resolution story to tell about why it took so long for the OSE, the Pueblos, and the "non-Pueblos" to finally get along in some sort of tentative draft settlement. Although not technically finalized, the state reps and senators are on to seeking funding for the 'federal solution' to Aamodt. Second, I met with author and anthropology Sylvia Rodriguez, who wrote one of the two seminal texts on acequias ( Acequia , SAR Press - Santa Fe - 2006). While slowly starting to re-pack and de-content her anthropology office, Sylvia is moving into the Alfonso Ortiz Center to guide future participatory action research projects through UNM and other interested parties in the local and regional community. I then had time to peruse...

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting John Baxter, author of " Dividing New Mexico's Waters " a book published in 1997, although he was reserved in demeanor. Apparently he has kept up with his historic research practice, even past 80, doing some consulting work with the State Engineer on the Rio Chama priority dates. Hopefully we'll have more occasion to discuss this work. Today (9.2.09) has been occupied with reading umpteen articles, including a whole set by the good folks at New Mexico State University, and it's promising that more work is now seeing the light of day on ecosystem services of acequias, and acequia interactions with both natural stream surface waters and groundwater. Fernald and Guldan, along with some other colleagues at NMSU, seem to be the principal 'culprits' of this welcome and quality research . One of the MA students has also completed an interesting study on the land-use changes since the 60s (by land use type, rather than too...