on public scholarship...

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 water rights to a dry mesa that sits in between the two villages (C and ReM) but the site itself is in the drainage of the Rio En Medio and so asking Chupadero to ask for water rights conveyance is against their self-interest as the water, at least in theory, would be 'leaving the basin' in terms of the legal allocation of the right.

Complex stuff, and just now am I starting to feel comfortable with the basis for these requests and the right-minded denials by concerned acequia commissioners.

Photo: The "oasis" of the Rio Chupadero, in the eponymous village, scene for just one example of water chicanery in New Mexico.