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

It's time to register for the New Mexico Acequia Association's "Congreso de las Acequias," the 10th annual event they have hosted. You can register here , for the events on December 4th and 5th (09), and it will be held at the Santa Fe County extension building off Rodeo Road (turn-in on Paseo de los Pueblos). The program looks interesting, and includes a 'blessing of the waters' on Saturday morning as well. It should be a good occasion to meet mayordomos and parciantes from around the state - excellent. A new concilio, or supervisory board, will be elected as well. I'm registered and paid up, are you? See you there - hasta pronto! Photo: Embudo, NM acequia (eye candy only)

Los Padillas Acequia Meeting, south valley, Oct 27, 2009 -- For fans of the original "Milagro Beanfield War," by John Nichols, this update should sound a bit familiar aside from the fact that this is not (yet) about condos in New Mexico. But the meeting illustrated the difficulties of managing an urban acequia, set in the midst of a larger conservation district (MRGCD), with long-time residents and relative newcomers. Set in the south valley of Albuquerque, in the original settlement called Los Padillas, the new acequia association (eponymous, Los Padillas Acequias Association) has had its struggles over the last few years. This was all too obvious on Tuesday night as the meeting started off with a subtle bang, mainly due to a central instigator (one Ms. McCraw, who run her own 'news' outlet in the South Valley), during which people questioned the legality and very substance of the minutes from their last meeting in March of 09. Someone went so far as to call them ...

In a move that could be regarded as "nihilist," I'm blogging today about...nothing. I have nothing to write because, well, nothing happened. Too opaque? One of the interim committees of the New Mexico state legislature is the Water and Natural Resource Committee, with its smaller sub committee on acequias. No problem - their meeting was set months ago for today, Monday, October 26, 2009. Place: Northern New Mexico College. It looked like a fascinating agenda, set to start at 9a.m. sharp, and guests and testimony from parciantes from at least a dozen different regions of New Mexico. Here is a photo of the packed room at NNMC, rooms 101-102. Scratching your head? I was too. It apparently was cancelled on Friday, much to my...well, let's call it "consternation" to keep the G rating on this blog. The second photo is taken from inside the meeting room (not), the weather this morning - not bad, even if there was a little freezing fog in the Espanola area. But se...

I attended, yesterday, the Middle Rio Grande Water Assembly, an informal working group originally created to create the MRG Water Plan (published in 2004) that has continued to meet after its original mission was completed five years ago. It was interesting for both some content, the nature of how that content was presented and portrayed, and for the positions that were clear from the so-called stakeholders present. The panelist sessions were probably the highlight, though like any such format the audience wants to participate more, at the same time that panelists want to have their say or perspective included. The folks in front included the assembly facilitator and the assembly president, who rifled through three interesting panelist sessions and a "keynote address" by Tom Turney. Turney's address was both rushed and a little lack-luster, either because of nerves or because he felt rushed (or both) - but it highlighted many of the continuing difficulties the state wil...

A brief report on the two-day "acequia hydrology" symposium here in Santa Fe at the fair grounds; Wednesday, October 21st was largely the PowerPoint and light discussion format for presenting the latest, or at least recent, findings from the New Mexico State University Alcalde research station. Steven Guldan and Sam Fernald, along with their current or former students Carlos Ochoa, Quita Ortiz and Ciara Cusack, gave the audience some quantitative data from hydrological and/or land-use research to go along with the qualitative data that parciantes, mayordomos and previous authors have provided for many years. These were quite interesting, less for their content personally because I've read these studies in article format already, for the reactions that were evoked in the audience. Clearly, some wanted these data as a kind of affirmation of what they "long known, always," others were interested in acquiring the data for legal cases still pending or under appeal...

Another interesting story today in the New Mexican , regarding some newly-discovered (but long-known) springs in the upper watershed of the Rio Grande, near the state line with Colorado, close to Ute Mountain. Now, for observers and watch-dogs, please pay attention that no one counts this as "new water" in the Rio Grande to divert willy-nilly. This flow is already accounted for in the Otowi gauge numbers...it's not an immaculate spring that is contributing shadow cfs flow to the river. Got it? Good.

It's been a busy, and strange, week. A few conversations fell through, others materialized, and then topped off with the arrival of my book galley proofs (yuck). I was distracted enough to miss the editorial and subsequent editorials (x4) on the Aamodt settlement and what it will "do" for the Pojoaque residents, not to mention many Santa Fe residents with some dissenters obvious. Other news had it that Las Campanas has pulled the plug on its partner role in the Buckman project. No surprise there - benefits, yes please; obligations...uh, try us again later (just kidding, we're broke). My condolences to Rick. So this will be the first post of many, long overdue, as I enter what I'm officially calling "acequia week" since activities begin with the Acequia Hydrology Symposium and its associated field tour the next day; follow that up with some sexy proofing, a nice picnic on Sunday with friends, then a subcommittee on acequias (pdf) hearing and meeti...

The latest from D.C. is that the House and Senate bills on the Aamodt and Abeyta cases are moving through, and the final federal "stimulus package" amount will be hefty to quell these adjudication legacies in New Mexico. S. Matlock's piece in the New Mexican shows how determined certain parties are about pushing these funding bills through, given their longevity in the state's legal history. What is remarkable is how, especially in the Aamodt case, some of this negotiation went underground from the late 90s to when a settlement draft was proposed in 04. That these concerns about public access to information and what the settlement means (especially to "non-Pueblo" participants) are still problematic is really not all that surprising. One dimension that remains troubling, visible in a recent poll about Aamodt , is that people who claim to know something about the settlement are still unhappy about the terms. And even if the Taos area (Abeyta) settlement is...

A good two-day excursion to Albuquerque and southern New Mexico on Friday (2) and Saturday (3) to take part in the 'official' tour of the Trinity site southeast of Socorro on the White Sands Missile Range, organized and led by docents from the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History . On Friday, I had a chat with Leslie Kryder who is about to defend her Masters' work on the Lower Rio Grande adjudication and her role in organizing some workshops to help people navigate the upcoming legal waters to their water rights secured. As a member of a new crop of water resources experts, she's faced with either consulting, working at some point for the State Engineer, or finding some new path. And we'll both probably be at the next Water Assembly in late october in Albuquerque, which has one of the most scattered titled themes I've ever seen for such a gathering, but it should be a great venue to connect with other hydrogeeks. The Trinity tour was interesting - ...

These are simply some shots we took as we moved up the Pecos River watershed today, from Pecos Pueblo itself, to the river, and finally the upper watershed where this improvised acequia was diverting water into one of the nearby lakes adjacent to cabins. Rough day. Life is good. Below: Pecos River, through Pecos. Improvised acequia diverting water from Pecos tributary into a nearby lake with cabins